21 U.S.C. § 2224 Surveillance

• Library: United States Statutes
• Edition: 2023
• Currency: Current through P.L. 118-22 with Court Rules updates (published on www.congress.gov on 12/01/2023)
• Year: 2023
• Citation: 21 U.S.C. § 2224

(a) Definition of foodborne illness outbreak

In this Act, the term "foodborne illness outbreak" means the occurrence of 2 or more cases of a similar illness resulting from the ingestion of a certain food.

(b) Foodborne illness surveillance systems

(1) In general

The Secretary, acting through the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shall enhance foodborne illness surveillance systems to improve the collection, analysis, reporting, and usefulness of data on foodborne illnesses by-

(A) coordinating Federal, State and local foodborne illness surveillance systems, including complaint systems, and increasing participation in national networks of public health and food regulatory agencies and laboratories;

(B) facilitating sharing of surveillance information on a more timely basis among governmental agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Homeland Security, and State and local agencies, and with the public;

(C) developing improved epidemiological tools for obtaining quality exposure data and microbiological methods for classifying cases;

(D) augmenting such systems to improve attribution of a foodborne illness outbreak to a specific food;

(E) expanding capacity of such systems, including working toward automatic electronic searches, for implementation of identification practices, including fingerprinting strategies, for foodborne infectious agents, in order to identify new or rarely documented causes of foodborne illness and submit standardized information to a centralized database;

(F) allowing timely public access to aggregated, de-identified surveillance data;

(G) at least annually, publishing current reports on findings from such systems;

(H) establishing a flexible mechanism for rapidly initiating scientific research by academic institutions;

(I) integrating foodborne illness surveillance systems and data with other biosurveillance and public health situational awareness capabilities at the Federal, State, and local levels, including by sharing foodborne illness surveillance data with the National Biosurveillance Integration Center; and

(J) other activities as determined appropriate by the Secretary.

(2) Working group

The Secretary shall support and maintain a diverse working group of experts and stakeholders from Federal, State, and local food safety and health agencies, the food and food testing industries, consumer organizations, and academia. Such working group shall provide the Secretary, through at least annual meetings of the working group and an annual public report, advice and recommendations on an ongoing and regular basis regarding the improvement of foodborne illness surveillance and implementation of this section, including advice and recommendations on-