# Enhance Capacity and Capability of State Human and Animal Food Testing - Nebraska Department of Agriculture

> **NIH FDA U19** · NEBRASKA ST DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE · 2020 · $7,833

## Abstract

Admin Core Summary The Nebraska Department of Agriculture (NDA) Laboratory is applying for the 
Laboratory Flexible Funding Model (LFFM) in support of building and maintaining our human and animal 
food testing capacity so that we can continue working towards an Integrated Food Safety System. The 
laboratory works in concert with NDA Finance, Legal, and other internal shared services to provide 
administrative support to the NDA Commercial Feed Program (full AFRPS implementation as of March 
2020) and NDA Food and Dairy Program. The laboratory provides consultation on lab testing requests 
and fulfills MFRPS Standard 10 and AFRPS Standard 10. 
 NDA Laboratory requirements for sample collection are updated annually in a sampling 
agreement between the Laboratory and regulatory programs. We determine a sample collection 
calendar, discuss expectations for routine and non‐routine samples, and completion of sample 
submission forms to establish chain of custody. NDA will modify the terms of our laboratory sampling 
agreements to meet the requirements of the Laboratory Flexible Funding Model. 
 The laboratory ensures that all key personnel for this project have fulfilled necessary training 
and obtained authorizations (where needed) according to our quality management system. Staff 
perform the same training and authorization steps for all laboratory activities under scope (i.e., read and 
understand the procedure, observe the procedure, perform the procedure under observation, perform 
the procedure independently, manager reviews training record prior to conferring authority). 
Proficiency testing is an effective way to demonstrate ongoing competency for each test method. 
 Post award, the NDA Laboratory will be in communication with FDA to discuss cooperative 
agreement specifics not covered in the LFFM. We will take part in planning national testing workflows 
and contribute to identification of Hazard‐to‐Commodity pairs. In addition, we look forward state 
laboratory workplanning in support of the one workforce concept. 
 The laboratory prepares a monthly report using inputs from each laboratory section supervisor. 
These monthly lab reports are valuable in the preparation of federal grant materials and other agency 
reporting needs. We have also reported FDA data to eLEXNET as instructed in previous cooperative 
agreements. In 2019, Nebraska volunteered to participate in a pilot project with other state labs and 
FDA FERN to test a new data submission process to the National Food Safety Data Exchange (NFSDX). 
Steps involved mapping NDA test codes to match FDA codes and then use the new submission template 
to upload the data manually. Nebraska was the first state partner to achieve a successful upload of the 
NFSDX manual template during the pilot.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10174029
- **Project number:** 1U19FD007083-01
- **Recipient organization:** NEBRASKA ST DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
- **Principal Investigator:** Sally Flowers
- **Activity code:** U19 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** FDA
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $7,833
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-09-01 → 2025-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10174029

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10174029, Enhance Capacity and Capability of State Human and Animal Food Testing - Nebraska Department of Agriculture (1U19FD007083-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10174029. Licensed CC0.

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