Domestic mutual reliance (DMR) is a seamless partnership that enables the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and states with comparable regulatory public health systems, as trusted partners, to rely on, coordinate with, and leverage one another’s work, data, and actions to meet the public health goal of a safe national food supply.

Through DMR, the FDA and state regulatory partners collaborate to prevent, detect, and respond to human and animal foodborne illness and emerging issues. DMR currently means working more closely with these partners to continuously improve inspections, response, laboratory, compliance, and enforcement systems.  An important measure we track is “voluntary compliance.” 

While the FDA is legally limited in the non-public information we can share with state regulatory partners, we are exploring ways to expand information sharing to achieve our goals.

Short and Intermediate Benefits to Industry and Consumers:

• Reinforces federal and state information sharing systems to protect industry trade secrets and other non-public information
• Improves quality, integrity and reliability of inspections, investigations, laboratory results, and technical support to promote voluntary compliance and rapid response when necessary
• Promotes workforce development and equivalency of regulatory authorities based on most current science nationwide
• Focuses on prevention efforts by coordinating allocation of inspection and sampling resources on high-risk products and non-compliant operations before illnesses occur and impact the whole industry
• Reduces duplication of inspections, sampling, and compliance activities to minimize impact on a firm’s resources
• Encourages proactive sharing and leveraging of industry expertise through food safety and inspection outreach and education
• Coordinates food safety and inspection resources and support for new businesses to promote a food safety culture and encourage active managerial control
• Supports joint development of IT platforms for sharing information not only among regulatory partners, but also with industry
• Improves response preparedness and coordination, surveillance, investigation, mitigation, and post-response activities to support short- and long-term foodborne illness prevention efforts
• Improves quality and sharing of root cause analysis to support development of effective prevention initiatives with all food safety stakeholders
• Establishes a collaborative infrastructure in an integrated food safety system to detect and address new risks and emerging food safety issues  
• Increases detection capabilities and methodologies that can be shared with private and industry laboratories
• Reduces risk and liability associated with human and animal foodborne illness outbreaks, contamination, and recalls  
• Improves industry and consumer confidence in regulatory programs
• Improves consumer confidence in the regulatory/industry system of checks and balances
• Improves consumer confidence in nation’s food supply, which is good for everyone!