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The move, which comes as part of the agency's recently announced Food Protection Plan, will see three grants being awarded to spot radioactive material in food.
FDA said the lab grants will expand the testing program of its Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA) to address the threat to food safety through radiological terrorism events. In addition, they will help identify accidental contamination.
The three-year grants provide $250,000 a year to the Texas Department of State Health Services Laboratory, the New York Health Research/New York Department of Health, and the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene.
The grants will be used for supplies, personnel, and facility upgrades. The labs will also receive training in current food testing methodologies, participate in method development and validation, proficiency testing, and food defense surveillance assignments.
This year has seen a number of changes in efforts to ensure food safety, following numerous high profile contamination cases and safety slips.
Earlier this month, the US government announced wide sweeping plans to improve the safety of the nation's food supply, with measures including more stringent inspections, stronger penalties and mandatory recalls.
The two plans unveiled aim to prevent contamination in the domestic food chain (Food Protection Pan), and to ensure the safety of imported food (Import Safety Action Plan).
The FDA's Food Protection Plan is built around three core elements: prevention, intervention and response.
It will promote increased corporate responsibility, increased collaboration and communication with stakeholders, and a broad risk-based approach to food protection.
Under the plan, FDA will also be able to issue additional preventive controls for high-risk foods, accredit third parties for voluntary food inspections, increase access to food records during emergencies, and issue a mandatory recall if voluntary recalls are not effective.
Following in the 'prevention', 'intervention' and 'response' vein, FDA said the new funded labs will be involved in food defense surveillance testing as well as bolstering the FDA's emergency response efforts by increasing the capacity for testing of foods for radioactive contamination, intentional or accidental.
These labs are part of the Food Emergency Response Network (FERN).
According to FDA, FERN aims to integrate the nation's food-testing laboratories at the local, state, and federal levels into a network able to respond to emergencies involving biological, chemical, or radiological food contamination.
The network is designed to respond to emergencies related to agents in food and restore the public's confidence in the food supply.
