FDA’s Office of Training, Education, and Development (OTED) will continue offering training to ensure the IFSS workforce has the job-specific competencies to apply consistent investigatory and laboratory practices, stay abreast of and adopt current regulations and standards, and perform comparable work at all levels to ensure a safe and secure human and animal food supply. OTED will serve on the RLTS Steering Committee and remain a leader in training design and delivery in the reimagined RLTS.

This highly trained workforce is composed of thousands of federal and state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) regulatory and laboratory professionals including, but not limited to: FDA consumer safety officers, compliance officers, and laboratory analysts; SLTT food safety inspectors/environmental health specialists/epidemiologists; and other regulatory, laboratory, epidemiology, and food emergency response officials.

The FDA, its SLTT human and animal food regulatory and laboratory association partners, and the Partnership for Food Protection are excited to launch a 5-year IFSS RLTS Strategic Plan (Fiscal Years 2024 through 2028) and companion Implementation Plan to design and implement an RLTS that will revolutionize how human and animal food regulatory and laboratory training is administered in the United States. Click here to see the organizations that worked with the FDA to develop the 5-year IFSS RLTS Strategic Plan. Click here to learn more about the steps taken by the project team to develop the IFSS RLTS Strategic and Implementation Plans.

The Strategic Plan outlines the high-level outcomes, goals, and objectives to help the FDA and its partners design and implement an optimal, sustainable, integrated RLTS that advances domestic mutual reliance, supports the goals of an IFSS, and includes the following characteristics (“strategy principles/vision”):

• Is built with full collaboration and support of IFSS partners.
• Includes flexible and adaptable learning tools that incorporate advancements in instructional design, adult learning theories, and technology to ensure effective learning and knowledge transfer.
• Ensures course content is kept current and addresses emerging training needs.
• Standardizes job-specific competencies (“National Curriculum Standards”) to ensure the consistency of IFSS regulatory and laboratory partner training.
• Maximizes training capacity and access to meet the current and forecasted needs of IFSS regulatory and laboratory partners.
• Leverages opportunities for all IFSS partners (regulatory, associations, academia, and industry) to share in the responsibility of designing and delivering training. (This includes establishing a system for determining partner course alignment with RLTS standards for course content, design, and delivery, as well as expanding OTED’s Train-the-Trainer (TTT) program).
• Ensures long-term sustainment of proficiency and knowledge to ensure effective and consistent application of competencies across IFSS regulatory and laboratory partners.

In Fiscal Year 2024, the FDA will be working in collaboration with its IFSS partners to lay the groundwork for the reimagined RLTS. This includes building out the National Curriculum Standards (NCS) for regulatory and laboratory professionals, in collaboration with the International Food Protection Training Institute (IFPTI), the Partnership for Food Protection (PFP), the Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO), the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA), the Association for Public Health Laboratories (APHL) and the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO). The NCSs represent national competency standards for human and animal food regulatory professionals and laboratorians. They describe the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed by these professionals to successfully perform their jobs, thereby assuring a competent regulatory and laboratory workforce doing comparable work across all jurisdictions.

In addition, a collaboratively governed and administered IFSS RLTS governance structure will be stood up to include a Steering Committee, a National Coordination Center (NCC), and various advisory committees that will recommend national standards and policies for course content, design, delivery, and alignment/equivalency determinations. Once operational, the National Coordination Center will provide day-to-day oversight of the RLTS including setting up a triage/review process for determining alignment of partner courses/learning opportunities and credentialing programs with RLTS standards. Click here to see other tactics, projects, and activities planned in the first two years of the Implementation Plan.

In short, the RLTS will improve the overall training experience, capacity, quality, and consistency in the IFSS:

• The RLTS will ensure consistent quality training via standardized/validated job-specific competencies and nationally accepted standards for course content, design, delivery, and alignment/equivalency determinations.
• Regulatory and laboratory professionals will have defined learning paths. They will know the competencies that they need to do their jobs (and the associated courses and/or learning experiences they will need) as they advance through their careers.
• The RLTS will allow more flexibility for regulatory and laboratory professionals through:
  • Options for completing courses in different modalities (virtual on-demand, virtual instructor-led, in-person instructor-led, etc.), depending on the course objectives.
  • Options to take different providers’ courses that are deemed in alignment with RLTS standards.
  • Alternative ways to demonstrate competency versus completing courses.
• Regulators, laboratorians, and industry will be able to learn from each other, thus enhancing the learning experience and contributing to enhanced collaboration and partnership.
• Having access to more training will facilitate human and animal food regulatory programs’ conformance with FDA inspection contract and National Regulatory Program Standards training requirements.