FOOD ANIMAL RESIDUE AVOIDANCE DATABANK (FARAD) PROGRAM: UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA COMPONENT

The Food Animal Residue Avoidance Databank (FARAD) is a national food safety program that is supported by the National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA) in the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). FARAD developed from the Residue Avoidance Program and was established in 1982. During the current application cycle, FARAD will have been in operation nearly continuously for 35 years. In its current configuration, FARAD is a collaborative program that is organized and run by faculty at four U.S.-based colleges/ schools of veterinary medicine, including North Carolina State University (NCSU), the University of California-Davis (UCD), the University of Florida (UF) and Kansas State University (KSU). FARAD has become an important resource that provides up-to-date regulatory information and serves as a real-time drug advisory resource for veterinarians, producers and others involved in food animal production industries. As such, FARAD is an important and crucial program for the protection and maintenance of a residue-free food supply for the American public.The central mission of FARAD is to collect, analyze and generate scientifically-based pharmacometric information and to use this and other regulatory information to provide timely, scientifically-based recommendations to veterinarians, producers, industry representatives and others involved in food animal production. The benefits derived from FARAD are both proactive and reactive insofar as recommendations from FARAD can help prevent the accumulation of harmful drug residues in animal-derived food products as well as help to mitigate the impact from accidental exposures of food animals to agricultural chemicals, pesticides and industry-derived environmental contaminants, such as heavy metal contamination in cattle exposed to gas fracking water and radionuclide contamination of food animals. During the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster several years ago in Japan, FARAD advised regulatory officials from the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture. In addition, FARAD provided safe estimates for food safety during the manmade melamine contamination crisis nearly 8 years ago. The comprehensive collection and sophisticated pharmacokinetic analyses of chemical residue depletion profiles in a variety of food-producing animal species positions FARAD to provide crucial withdrawal information during incidents that impact livestock, including natural disasters, industrial accidents and intentional acts of agro-terrorism. In such instances, FARAD's expertise for mitigation of health risks to humans represents a key part of disaster response.FARAD functions through the collection of a variety of data related to the depletion of drugs and chemicals in animal tissues and the application of these data in formulating recommendations to its clients to avoid or mitigate residues. This process can involve the use of simple mathematical extrapolations or novel complicated algorithms where no readily applicable data exists to predict chemical depletion. FARAD's immediate clients are practicing veterinarians, regulators and extension officers, but it ultimately protects the food consuming public and contributes to enhanced human public health by equipping these professionals with the best science available from our research.FARAD personnel at UCD search the scientific literature for information about chemical elimination from food producing animals, extract relevant information, and enter it into a computer databank for easy retrieval. Because there are many factors which affect how rapidly an animal eliminates a residue; information about diet, age, sex, breed, and disease are taken into consideration. The databank allows existing curated information to be efficiently brought to bear "real time" on residue problems arising from exposure to environmental contaminants or from extralabel drug therapy. FARAD at UF collects and makes available a compilation of FDA approved drugs from which approved withdrawal times can be obtained. These data are available on FARAD's web-based interactive database, the Veterinarian's Guide to Residue Avoidance Management (VetGRAM), found at www.FARAD.org as well as mobile platforms for smartphone access. These FARAD products provide information for users about drugs that are approved for treating animal diseases, and the associated withholding times for milk, eggs, honey and pre-slaughter withdrawal times for meat. A calendar function is integrated into these programs to aid the veterinarian in the field. When information is not sufficient, direct access to FARAD experts is available through the Regional Access Centers at KSU, NCSU and UCD. FARAD provides multilayered service to persons most critical to production of safe foods of animal origin.FARAD is readily accessible through websites, e-mail, mobile applications and a toll-free telephone hotline, as well as in specific residue-avoidance publications. FARAD provides this guidance through use of its databank by specially trained doctoral-level professional staff to provide information on prevention and mitigation of violative chemical residues and supplies recommended withdrawal intervals to allow safe extralabel use of drugs in food animals under AMDUCA guidelines based on sound principles of residue avoidance. FARAD is a unique provider of such services. Expert system software that used to supplement printed compendia to helped drug users make more informed decisions, had been developed and are now available in a single portal, VetGRAM, available at FARAD's website maintained at UF. The development of pharmacokinetic strategies to link the chemical depletion data from the literature to the drug safety data from the drug approvals or regulatory authorities are conducted at KSU. The goal is to provide the best estimate of withdrawal time possible for the specific extra-label drug use or contaminant scenario at hand. Since residue data continues to be published daily in scientific journals and regulatory reports, maintenance and addition of new data by UCD are essential to providing accurate advice and mitigation of potential residue exposures. This is especially important since residue depletion data in food animals is sparse and FARAD predictions would be significantly strengthened with additional field data under usage conditions (e.g. in diseased animals for which the drug is labeled).FARAD has maintained a toll-free number since 1996: 1-888-US-FARAD to respond to specific inquiries for assistance. The primary FARAD website (www.farad.org) provides users with additional residue avoidance resources which reduce the need for more specialized and intensive telephone consultations. Over the past 17 years, with encouragement from the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), the FARAD Digest series have been published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA) . These digests provide well-documented information about extralabel drug withdrawal intervals. FARAD is officially allied with the Centre for Applied Biosciences International's (CABI) since 2003 where FARAD files are included in the various issues of their Animal Health and Production Compendium. Last year, FARAD and CABI successfully were awarded a planning grant from the World Trade Organization Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF) to assess feasibility of creating a global veterinary drug residue avoidance service, a FARAD goal for the last two decades.