SUMMARY: SPECIAL PROJECT TRACK 3 (METHOD DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION) The MDH Laboratories Administration places a high priority on developing and implementing cutting- edge technologies and capabilities. The core tenet of this large and multifaceted proposal is to contribute a comprehensive and integrated food protection laboratory hub to the Food Emergency Response Network (FERN) that is capable of analyzing many different foods across a diversity of threat priorities. Developing and validating new testing methods is thus central to achieving our goal of ensuring a safe food supply. Through this track the MDH Laboratories Administration proposes to conduct preliminary, short-term, or exploratory investigations, as needed by FERN, that focus on the feasibility of a new method and/or technology. The Laboratory will follow the Food & Drug Administration’s (FDA) guidelines for method validation as described in “Validation of Chemical Methods for the FDA FVM Program” to complete a one-year, single-laboratory validation study. The Division of Environmental Sciences has all of the instrumentation, including 5 ICP-MS and 3 LC-MS/MS mass spectrometers, multiple expert and experienced scientists, and established methodologies in place to perform these studies. Projects for each of the five years of this cooperative agreement will be chosen based on FERN needs, and/or proposed based on emerging local priorities and opportunities, in consultation with the FERN management team.