PAR-20-105 Laboratory Flexible Funding Model (LFFM) (U19) Chemistry Analytical Track 4: Capability/Capacity Development Division of Consolidated Laboratory Services Project Summary Principal Investigator: Christopher Waggener, Ph.D. Project Director: Shane Wyatt Project Summary The Division of Consolidated Laboratory Services (DCLS) is the public health laboratory for the Commonwealth of Virginia and offers a wide variety of laboratory testing services for state and federal agencies, local governments and other states in support of public health, environmental protection, and emergency response. DCLS provides surveillance and emergency response testing of food samples for the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) Food Safety Program by offering nearly comprehensive testing of food samples by microbiology, chemistry, and radiochemical methods. DCLS is a long-term participating partner in the FDA Cooperative Agreement Program (CAP) and is capable of providing screening for toxic compounds in foods by GC-MS, LC-MS, LC-HRMS, and ICP-MS. In addition, DCLS can perform targeted analysis to confirm the identity of adulterated compounds and quantify their presence as adulterants. DCLS proposes to participate in the Chemistry Capability/Capacity Development Analytical Track in order to increase the ability of DCLS to respond to state and federal requests for human food testing for fifteen common allergens in food. A single laboratory validation will be performed following DCLS policies and FDA guidelines in order to test method robustness and validity. Laboratory competence will be assessed by participation in an outside proficiency test deemed suitable or internal blind proficiency test.