(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—
(A)
the priority needs of regulatory agencies, the food industry, and consumers for information and analysis on foodborne illness and its causes;
(B)
opportunities to improve the effectiveness of initiatives at the Federal, State, and local levels, including coordination and integration of activities among Federal agencies, and between the Federal, State, and local levels of government;
(C)
improvement in the timeliness and depth of access by regulatory and health agencies, the food industry, academic researchers, and consumers to foodborne illness aggregated, de-identified surveillance data collected by government agencies at all levels, including data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention;
(D)
key barriers at Federal, State, and local levels to improving foodborne illness surveillance and the utility of such surveillance for preventing foodborne illness;
(E)
the capabilities needed for establishing automatic electronic searches of surveillance data; and
(F)
specific actions to reduce barriers to improvement, implement the working group’s recommendations, and achieve the purposes of this section, with measurable objectives and timelines, and identification of resource and staffing needs.