SUMMARY: CHEMISTRY ANALYTICAL TRACK 2 (HUMAN FOOD TESTING) Serious foodborne illness resulting from contamination of food is a notable and largely preventable public health problem that receives national spotlight every year. The overarching aim of this proposal is to contribute a comprehensive and integrated food protection laboratory hub to the Food Emergency Response Network (FERN) that is capable of analyzing food across many diverse threat priorities. Embracing the Food & Drug Administration’s prudent strategic shift from outbreak management to prevention through large volume sample testing, we propose to contribute our extensive and proven capabilities in toxic metal testing, nutrition analysis, and detection of pesticides and certain mycotoxins in foods. As a primary servicing laboratory for the Manufactured Food Product Regulatory Standard, we have successfully used our ISO/IEC 17025:2017-accredited methods to analyze a wide variety of foods. The current proposal seeks to maintain this momentum by continuing to test diverse human foods for chemical threats at the high sample volume level (500 samples per year). The commodity/hazard targets have been selected based on FDA’s national priorities. Since the MDH Laboratories Administration is a human food regulatory laboratory, 15% or more of samples will be collected by trained Maryland Office of Food Protection collectors. Additional samples will be collected by our own trained and FERN-approved contracted collectors, which will also allow us to rapidly tailor our testing to Maryland’s needs and threat priorities.