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ExpectMore.govExpectMore.gov home pageEXPECT FEDERAL PROGRAMS TO PERFORM WELL, AND BETTER EVERY YEAR.
 
Program Assessment

Program

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Research on Protection and Safety of Agricultural Food Supply

Research is conducted on critical issues for use by the Federal government, State and local governments and the private sector to improve the safety of the Nation's food supply. These USDA programs involve pre-harvest and post-harvest processing that take food from the field to the table.

Rating

What This Rating Means

PERFORMING
Moderately Effective

In general, a program rated Moderately Effective has set ambitious goals and is well-managed. Moderately Effective programs likely need to improve their efficiency or address other problems in the programs' design or management in order to achieve better results.
  • These programs meet a specific and important problem. The U.S. food supply is vulnerable to plant and animal pests and diseases, and contamination by pathogens and chemicals, whether accidentally or intentially introduced. These programs provide research in areas such as the rapid response to pests and diseases, and new and improved vaccines and genes affecting disease resistance.
  • Long term measures reflected the relevancy of USDA research. For example, two of the measures took into account how much the results of USDA food safety research is actually used by others. The program will conduct research and develop ways to allow food producers and processers to identify pathogens. The third measure was an actual assessment of relevancy.

Improvement Plan

About Improvement Plans

We are taking the following actions to improve the performance of the program:

  • Conducting an independent external Retrospective Panel Review of the Veterinary, Medical, and Urban Entomology program during FY 2007.
  • Re-evaluating the criteria that it uses to determine outyear targets for project quality, for the purpose of establishing more ambitious targets.

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