Randy Treadwell
WSDA Rapid Response & Emergency Management
This past year brought challenges for everyone, and while it remains to be seen how COVID-19 and its impacts will continue to affect us, many have found themselves taking on new responsibilities. This was definitely true for the WSDA Rapid Response & Emergency Management Program, where the Washington Food/Feed Rapid Response Team (RRT) resides.
In any year other than 2020-21, the Rapid Response Team earns its keep by coordinating multi-jurisdictional food and animal feed outbreak responses. For example, in the 2018-19 budget period, the team coordinated responses to nine separate incidents including E.coli illnesses associated with raw milk, detections of listeria and salmonella in raw pet food, and severe winter weather impacts on dairy cattle in central Washington.
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| A 2019 training event led by the Rapid Response Team. |
In 2020, the Rapid Response Team assisted in coordinating
with its food safety partners on 17 incident responses ranging from Listeria in canned fish, campylobacter illnesses associated with
undercooked chicken liver, and assisting with tracing efforts on a national
leafy green outbreak. These are all typical for our team, but after 2020, we
can add infectious disease response to the running list of the program’s capabilities.
Although routine response work continued, we all had to
adapt in 2020 to the needs brought on by the global pandemic, and Washington
RRT was no different.
One of the great opportunities of having a food/feed Rapid
Response Team as part of WSDA’s Emergency Management Program is that each side brings
its own extensive network of subject matter experts.
These networks overlapped in many ways when tasked with
solving, or helping others solve, the various challenges that came with sharing
COVID-19 public health guidance, obtaining and distributing personal protective
equipment, tracking federal guidance and requirements, and educating and
advising others on the state’s vaccine roll-out plan.
For example, the same emergency managers we typically work with on radiation emergency preparedness or Incident Command System training became involved last year in helping with the statewide COVID-19 response. Despite different roles, we all knew how to reach each other and tap into one another’s resource network to share best practices, learn what had already been done, and coordinate our efforts.
Knowing who to contact in food safety programs of other
states through the national Rapid Response Team network helped expedite
COVID-19 guidance for the food processing industry. Having all of these
networks already established sped the agency’s public health response.
The Rapid Response Team was also able to help provide more
tangible solutions, such as assisting the WSDA Food Safety Program purchase
handheld radios so food safety inspectors could continue important inspections
and investigations while maintaining social distance measures and following current
statewide requirements.
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| Washington National Guard helping at a food pantry. |
The work needed to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak illustrated
that programs with rapid response teams can not only be boots on the ground,
but also effective at coordinating the flow of information and act as key
facilitators for an effective public health response.
COVID-19 brought challenges, suffering, and heartache to
many, but it provided the opportunity to identify what worked well in our response, and what could be improved.
While COVID-19 changed a lot of things, the networks of
dedicated public health and emergency management professionals continued to work effectively. The interlacing prompted by the challenges of this last year have only made these networks stronger.