Research gaps in methods or approaches to food safety issues requiring a broad pre-competitive industry engagement working with the FDA is enabled through a leveraging of shared costs and shared risk reduction. This is made possible through a cooperative research and development agreement between the FDA and IIT, where industry members in IFSH can work alongside the FDA scientists in the following science platforms: Food Processing and Packaging, Chemistry, Microbiology, Nutrition and Proficiency Testing. Recent examples would be from areas in low moisture food safety, sprout safety, high pressure processing or whole genome sequencing. Additionally, industry-only research consortiums can be formed with IIT to advance technology innovation forward and shorten the path to market. In either type of consortium, the FDA scientists and engineers from the CFSAN Division of Processing Science and Technology are co-located in the IIT Moffett Campus and are readily available for guidance.