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SAFE FOOD MULTI-YEAR PLAN
Citation:
Impact/Purpose:
The Office of Research and Development (ORD) has initiated a multi-year planning effort to plan the direction of our research program in selected topic areas over five or more years. This approach promotes ORD's focus on the highest priority issues and provides coordination for achieving our long-term research goals. The focus of this effort is the development of Multi-Year Plans (MYPs).
The purpose of the MYPs is to provide a framework that integrates research across ORD's laboratories and centers and Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) goals in support of the Agency's mission to protect human health and the environment. The MYPs identify long-term goals, and present annual performance goals (APGs) and associated annual performance measures (APMs) for a planning window of approximately 5-10 years. By helping to identify the impact of potential annual planning decisions, MYPs aid in the evaluation of research options. MYPs also foster the integration of strategic risk-based environmental protection and anticipation of future environmental issues by communicating our research approach and timing for responding to environmental issues. MYPs are intended to be living documents and are updated as needed to reflect the current state of the science, resource availability, and Agency priorities.
MYPs include two major components: (1) a narrative description of the plan, and (2) a matrix of goals and measures. The narrative provides an introduction and background to the topic of the plan, describes the long-term goals, provides the logic/thinking used to array performance goals to achieve long-term goals, and describes the integration between goals and organizations. The matrix is used to indicate annual goals and measures needed to meet the long-term goals identified in the plan. These goals and measures are arrayed across time (i.e., fiscal years) and laboratories/centers and are based on total annual resource levels for the MYP topic area that will not exceed the resource level proposed in the most recent President's Budget.
Description:
The Safe Food Research Program, developed in response to the passage of the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA), builds on earlier research to reduce scientific uncertainty in risk assessment. Research results will provide data needed to develop refined aggregate and cumulative risk assessments, to develop the appropriate safety factors to protect children and other sensitive populations, to refine risk assessments and decisions regarding pesticide safety, and to provide risk mitigation technologies to reduce risks to humans. There is one long-term goal in the Safe Food MYP. Within the scope of this MYP, EPA will: 1. By 2008 provide scientific tools to OPP/OPPTS that can be used to characterize, assess, and manage risks across the exposure-to-dose-effects continuum in implementing the FQPA requirements.