The new MOU builds on existing efforts to increase interagency collaboration and coordination to achieve improved regulatory efficiency and effectiveness involving establishments under dual jurisdiction. Dual jurisdiction establishments (DJEs) are regulated by both agencies.

The MOU improves upon previous information exchange by:

• Adding headquarters-level contacts for each agency to improve awareness of findings or emerging issues that may warrant more than local or regional coordination.
• Updating the types of findings to be shared to reflect advances in understanding microbiological food hazards, including microbiological or other sampling findings in DJEs or products, which may provide information about sanitary conditions in those establishments or indicate serious adverse health consequence of products under either agency’s jurisdiction. These results will include microbe characteristics (e.g., serotype, whole genome sequence, antimicrobial resistance profile, etc.) where applicable, and other information related to categorizing and tracking pathogens.

DJEs under this MOU are limited to human food operations and exclude animal food operations, which are regulated by FDA. 

This MOU also supersedes the 2014 MOU related to examination and inspection of Siluriformes fish and fish products.

The MOU can be found here. All FSIS MOUs can be found on the FSIS website here.