New Foodborne Illness Outbreak Response Exercise

The Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO) has released the Retail Food Outbreak Investigation Exercise. This new tabletop exercise was designed by a group of subject matter and instructional design experts to provide participants with a real-life, plausible retail food outbreak scenario to evaluate:

  • Foodborne illness outbreak readiness and investigation procedures,
  • Interagency collaboration,
  • Communication, and
  • Jurisdictional issue management.

The Retail Food Outbreak Investigation Exercise supports Standard 5 of the Voluntary National Retail Food Regulatory Program Standards as a mock foodborne illness investigation to test program readiness. This exercise is now available for free to download from the AFDO website.

Check out the Collaborative’s other resources related to foodborne illness outbreaks.

The Retail Food Outbreak Investigation Exercise uses the FREE-B (Food Related Emergency Exercise Bundle) format. FREE-B is a specialized exercise format designed for food safety and emergency response training. It consists of a collection of scenarios based on both intentional and unintentional food contamination events. The FREE-B format:

  • Provides plausible food contamination events allowing agencies to assess existing plans, protocols, and procedures,
  • Can be used by multiple jurisdictions together or by individual agencies, and enables participation from partners, and
  • Offers a consistent format for food emergency response exercises across different agencies.