How We Advance Food Safety and Safe Animal Food Products
Animal food is weighed on a scale.
To advance the safety of animal food products, CVM’s Office of Applied Science develops and validates methods needed to detect microbial contaminants in food for animals. The loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) method to screen for Salmonella in animal food is an example of a method CVM scientists developed to advance animal food safety. This method is currently being used by the FDA’s Office of Regulatory Affairs field laboratories for regulatory sample testing.
Vet-LIRN puts those detection methods to work, supporting investigations into whether an animal illness is related to food or a drug it consumed. Through NARMS, we monitor antimicrobial-resistant bacteria in retail meats.
We maintain the Phish-Pharm database on the movement of drugs in aquatic animals as a resource to search scientific literature in support of drug contaminant surveillance.