Created in 2011, The Interagency Food Safety Analytics Collaboration (IFSAC) is a partnership of three federal agencies—the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the United States Department of Agriculture (FSIS). IFSAC aims to enhance the coordination of federal food safety analytic efforts and address cross-cutting priorities for food safety data collection, analysis, and use.  In particular, IFSAC’s projects and studies seek to identify foods that are important sources of human illness and focuses its analytic efforts on four priority pathogens: Salmonella, Escherichia coli (E. coli) O157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes (Lm), and Campylobacter.  IFSAC’s success is tied, in large measure, to its work with key partners, including federal and state public health and regulatory agencies and industry stakeholders.

On March 24, 2017, FDA CDC, and FSIS issued a new Strategic Plan for 2017-2021 as part of IFSAC. Under the new strategic plan, IFSAC intends to focus on continuing to improve estimates of the sources of foodborne illnesses and developing methods to estimate how these sources change over time. The three goals of the new strategic plan are: (1) to improve the use and quality of new and existing data sources; (2) to improve analytic methods and models; and (3) to enhance communication about IFSAC progress.  Key objectives outlined in the strategic plan to achieve these goals, include:

• Enhance the collection and quality of relevant source data;

• Enhance the use of existing regulatory and foodborne illness surveillance data;

• Incorporate genomic data and other novel data sources;

• Explore ways to address key gaps in data quality, methods and models;

• Develop new analytic approaches and models to maximize use of existing data;

• Expand the availability of technical and scientific expertise through collaboration with internal and external partners;

• Enhance relationships and engagement with internal and external groups; and

• Improve the synthesis, interpretation and dissemination of analytical findings for multiple audiences.

The new strategic plan highlights IFSAC’s intent to continue engaging with industry stakeholders on future work.