Nov 12, 2013

Food safety project helps growers manage risk

Specialty crop growers have a myriad of concerns when contemplating the impact of the FDA’s Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).

Fruit and vegetable producers find themselves directly in the crosshairs of the legislation, which aims to ensure the U.S. food supply is safe by shifting the focus from responding to contamination to preventing it. Increased food safety demands from wholesale buyers also have put producers on the hot seat.

A food safety project – introduced in December 2011 at USDA headquarters by Jim Slama, president of FamilyFarmed.org, high-profile food and agriculture organizations and former Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan – continues to gain momentum by offering a free online tool to help mitigate farm-based food safety risks, particularly for small- to mid-scale fruit and vegetable farmers.

The On-Farm Food Safety Project is a voluntary tool that enables produce growers to create customized food safety plans, and thus adopt and document best practices in food safety. Once completed, the plans can help growers get GAP certified.

The project was touted as the first of its kind and was developed by the nonprofit FamilyFarmed.org, based in Oak Park, Ill., with lead funding from the USDA Risk Management Agency. A number of farm and produce industry partners helped create the program.

“We’re excited about it,” Slama said. “We think with the Food Safety Modernization Act looming, this is going to become even more important. We really did it to help farmers adapt best practices in food safety. It minimizes risk that one of their customers is going to get sick; minimizes the financial risk to the farm if someone gets sick; and gives them access to a lot of new markets.

“Since we launched it, we’ve had a success with a lot of growers using it,” Slama said. “This year we launched a Spanish-speaking version where you just go to the home page and link to the Spanish tool to go there and create a food safety plan. There’s nothing like this. From a farmer’s perspective, it’s a real easy thing for them to do.”

To generate a food safety plan using the tool, the farmer or user answers a series of questions that have been divided into food safety risk areas. They include worker health and hygiene, agricultural water, previous land use, soil amendments and manure, animals and pest control, packinghouse activities, product transportation, agricultural chemicals and field harvesting.

In addition to helping farmers create a food safety plan, the tool offers farmers a complete set of record keeping templates to document their food safety efforts, as well as food safety resources.

Once users have completed their farm’s food safety plan and compiled necessary documentation, they have the capacity to apply for GAP food safety certification, a process Slama said is being asked for by many large produce buyers. USDA’s GAP audit verification program focuses on best agricultural practices to verify that farms are producing fruits and vegetables in the safest manner possible to minimize risks of microbial food safety hazards.

“Wholesale buyers are increasingly requiring that farms adopt and quantify best practices in food safety,” Slama said. “We created this tool in order to give farmers access to a system that allows them to meet the needs of these buyers, while minimizing risk.”

The tool, two-and-a-half years in development, was initiated by a conversation between Slama and Will Daniels, senior vice president of food safety for Earthbound Farm.

“Foodborne pathogens don’t discriminate between small and large farms, but a one-size-fits-all approach to food safety isn’t effective,” Daniels said in a news release. “Programs have to be tailored to specific risks, which is what this tool does.”

Slama and Daniels saw the importance of providing an affordable, relevant means by which smaller growers could develop food safety programs, and the initiative was launched. Daniels agreed to chair the Technical Advisory Committee and, together, they recruited several national leaders in food safety to oversee the development of the project.

Groups that participated in the development and review of the tool include: Chipotle Mexican Grill, Community Alliance with Family Farmers, Compass Group, Earthbound Farm, Farm Aid, FDA, NSF Agriculture, Produce Marketing Association, Sysco, The Organic Center, Western Growers, Wallace Center at Winrock International, Wild Farm Alliance, University of California, Davis, United Fresh Produce Association and the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

Through a consensus process, technical advisers developed the online tool to meet the needs of small and large growers, Slama said.

Slama said the tool integrates with Harmonized GAP standards developed by United Fresh Produce Association, thus helping farmers meet the food safety compliance specifications of most wholesale buyers.

“A full spectrum of stakeholders came together to create this online tool, and we are grateful for their input,” Slama said. “We invite farms of all sizes to use it and to give us feedback about their experience.”

In addition to the online tool, FamilyFarmed.org has published the third edition of a technical manual, “Wholesale Success: A Farmer’s Guide to Selling, Postharvest Handling and Packing Produce.” It is the basis for the organization’s “Wholesale Success” grower workshops.

“In three and a half years the program has trained more than 6,000 farmers,” Slama said.

Matt Rogers, associate global produce coordinator for Whole Foods Market Produce, said the company is recommending the On-Farm Food Safety Program to growers it works with, in addition to collaborating on two training sessions in California.

“It’s a fantastic tool that is free online for growers to enhance their food safety work,” Rogers said. “They can develop a customized food safety plan and work on their handling standards and practices. The trainings are a great way to bring information forward to growers in a way that really helps them understand the tool and get a copy of the (Wholesale Success) manual.”

He said Whole Foods is encouraging its growers to attend the training sessions throughout the country, “whether we’re hosting them or not. Every tool that we can offer to our suppliers to help them work on these issues is a great asset.”

Rogers said Whole Foods “is looking for tools to provide to our suppliers to help them work on issues of food safety, sustainability and anything that increases the quality and integrity” of the product. “We focus on due diligence and knowing our supply base. Our field agents are constantly on farms to understand where the product comes from and knowing the supply chain is the best approach.”

– Gary Pullano