Potato cleaning at Open Door Farm in Cedar Grove, NC. From the CFSA workshop, Scale-Appropriate Equipment for Increased Efficiency & Mechanization on Small Farms. Credit: Stacey Sprenz

Have you ever heard the word audit and thought that it sounds exciting? More than likely not. Going through any inspection, especially related to your farm, feels overwhelming and invasive. But, if you are a produce grower, you may have heard of the term “GAP Audit.” A Good Agricultural Practices audit is a certification offered to the fruit and vegetable industry to verify an operation’s efforts to minimize the risk of contamination of fresh fruits, vegetables, and nuts by microbial pathogens and other foodborne hazards. In short, how do we ensure the product we buy is safe?

Buyers are looking for growers like yourself; many will want to verify you are a reputable supplier. GAP certification helps them ensure that. But how do you prepare to take your farm business to the next level? This article will cover some highlights to get you started and provide additional resources to explore.

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The Produce Rule regulates farms and farmer-owned packing houses that only grow or pack produce that is often eaten raw. Compliance will take effort, but won’t be as expensive as complying with the Preventive Control Rules that regulate food manufacturers.

 

washing-tomato

“But I wash, label, pack, hold, package, mix, or dehydrate raw produce.”

Even though you do those things to produce that people usually eat raw, you’re still considered a farm and may need to comply with the Produce Rule, but not the more expensive food manufacturing rules.

 

farmer-icon“But what about the farmer-owned packing house where I bring my produce?”

If the packing house limits its business to harvesting, shelling, hulling, washing, packing, holding, packaging, labeling, or dehydrating produce that people usually eat raw AND the packing house is owned by the farmer(s) who provide over 50% of the produce handled, you may need to comply with the Produce Rule, not the more expensive Preventive Control rules.

 

chopping-salad

 

Hang on. My business includes chopping greens.

Sad to say, chopped greens present a higher food safety risk. Chopping triggers the Preventive Control Rule.

 

 

eggplant-check

“But, everything I grow is commercially processed!”

The Rules say you need to:

1. Get a document from your customers about their processing practices.

2. Give a disclosure to customers saying you’re not processing in a way that kills pathogens.

And then you should be in compliance.

money-icon

 

“But, I’m SO small…I sell less than $25K/yr!”

The Rules say you need to keep business records to prove your annual produce sales. The rest of the Rules should not apply to you.

 

FDA Considers Local:
In-state or within 275 miles from the farm. Sales must be to an end-user (consumer or restaurant), NOT a wholesaler.

 

field-and-sun“I sold more than $25K, but I sell locally!”

If your sales total less than $500K/yr, you are only going to have to meet a few requirements. You may be QUALIFIED EXEMPT.

 

 

 

Everyone else has to meet the Produce Rule.

When? If your food sales are less than $250,000, you must comply with most of the Produce Rule by Jan. 26, 2020. Farms with total food sales between $250,000 and $500,000 have to comply by Jan. 26, 2019; and those with total food sales of $500,000 or more have until Jan. 26, 2018. Note that all businesses required to comply will have additional time to meet some of the water quality standards.

 

Learn more:

https://www.carolinafarmstewards.org/whos-affected-by-the-fsma-produce-rule/

https://www.carolinafarmstewards.org/new-fsma-rules/

 

DISCLAIMER: This graphic is intended for informational purposes. It is not legal advice.

 

By Roland McReynolds, CFSA Executive Director

A huge portion—maybe a majority—of the businesses serving local and regional food markets will face a new, higher level of food safety bureaucracy and paperwork beginning in September 2017, thanks to the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).FSMA

On September 10, 2015 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued final rules establishing new ‘preventive controls’ standards for food processing facilities and animal feed manufacturers under FSMA.  Beginning September 17, the timelines for compliance with the Preventive Controls Rules (PCR) started counting down: businesses with 500 or more employees must come into compliance within one year, those with less than 500 employees but over $1 million in sales will have two years, and those with less than $1 million in sales with have three years.  Five other FSMA regulations are due for publication over the next several months.  Together, these rules create new obstacles for farmers and food businesses to sell fruits, vegetables and value-added foods in local and organic product markets.  The PCR for human food is the most complex and far-reaching of them all.

Sustainable agriculture has fought through two rounds of public input to make the rules practical and appropriate to the scale and nature of local and regional food and farming businesses, and the final rules show that those determined efforts made an impact. But substantial threats remain—most importantly, the requirement for food facilities to prove that their suppliers comply with FSMA; in direct contradiction of the FSMA statute, the PCR in effect requires farms and food makers to pay for third party audits.  This requirement—known as supply chain verification—alone may bring the expansion of local food into mainstream distribution channels to a screeching halt.

farmer

New definitions of what counts as a farm and the types of things that farms can to do to prepare their crops for market post-harvest look like improvements from previous drafts of the regulations.  With these changes, the new PCRs allow farmer cooperatives to continue to operate as extensions of farms, instead being treated the same as giant-scale food manufacturing plants.

For other forms of food hubs and value-added processing facilities, the impacts remain to be seen.  There are many gray areas and ambiguities in the rules.

Supporters of sustainable agriculture will need to continue to fight to ensure common sense application of these new rules.

CFSA is a member of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), which issued a press statement highlighting areas of the rule where improvements have been made, and where additional clarity is needed to ensure the rules do not unfairly require farms to undergo third party audits.  NSAC also urged FDA to quickly finalize a related rule clarifying how farms and food businesses serving direct-to-consumer markets will be covered under the PCRs.  You can read the press statement here.

Combined, the PCRs for human food and for animal feed total over 1,500 pages.  CFSA staff and our allies are undertaking a thorough review of the rules over the coming weeks, and will publish more analysis on specific provisions on an ongoing basis. In addition to the supply chain verification requirement and farm definition, we will be looking closely at several key issues:

  • Definitions related to farming operations and activities that may trigger the facility definition;
  • Classification of various value-added activities, and the corresponding exemption for those activities classified as low-risk;
  • Requirements for so-called ‘exempt’ facilities – including the process for withdrawing and reinstating an exemption;
  • Requirements for facilities to conduct environmental monitoring and product testing; and
  • Compliance timelines for facilities that must register with FDA and comply with the rule.

NSAC will also be updating its “Am I Affected?” flow chart to help farms and food businesses assess whether the PCRs apply to their operations.

One of several flowcharts developed by NSAC to help farmers determine if FSMA applies to them.

One of several flowcharts developed by NSAC to help farmers determine if FSMA applies to them.

You can access the pre-publication version of the final rule here (PDF), as well as via FDA’s website, which includes additional supporting materials.

The next important FSMA milestone is publication of the final Produce Rule, due by late October 2015, which will establish minimum requirements for the ‘safe’ production of fruits and vegetables on farms.  More about FSMA implementation and background information on the proposed PCRs is on our website.

In every round of the struggle over FSMA, sustainable ag has influenced the process effectively, and won concessions to common sense.  As the final rules are put into practice, we will still need to steer the implementation in favor of practical, reasonable requirements that will allow local, organic food to continue to grow and thrive.  Please stay connected with CFSA to learn more about what still can, and must, be done to protect sustainable agriculture.

By Patricia Tripp, CFSA’s Local Produce Safety Coordinator

 

Water is a basic necessity of life and is essential in the production of fresh fruits and vegetables. Not only is water used for irrigation purposes in agriculture, but it is also often used for cleaning purposes before marketing the produce. Water may also be used to protect crops from frost or to apply fertilizers or pesticides. Ensuring that you have clean water on the farm for these practices is an important part of minimizing contamination by disease-causing microorganisms called pathogens. Water can carry pathogens such as Giardia, Cryptosporidium, Norovirus, Salmonella, and E. coli 0157:H7 (more…)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Proposed Produce Rule is a substantively defective product. It’s not a question of the difficulty and costs of compliance and enforcement or of farm size or a commodity’s inherent safety – although these are important issues.

The case I want to present is that FDA made seriously wrong choices on too many issues: irrigation water standards; biological inputs such as compost, radiological and chemical hazards; sprout production and fresh-cut production; epidemiological data and economic analysis. Like other hazardous and defective products, the Proposed Rule should be recalled.

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The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) became law in 2011, and authorizes new regulations for farmers who grow fresh produce and for certain facilities that process fresh produce for people to eat.  Once Congress passes a bill, it is sent to the federal agency that will be in charge of implementing it; in this case, that is the FDA.  The FDA is currently in what is known as the rulemaking stage, meaning they are turning the bill passed by Congress into actual rules and regulations.  In 2013, the agency published its proposed regulations for:

These new rules under FSMA would have had devastating impacts on sustainable and organic food production in the US. (more…)

CFSA has previously featured information about what counts as a ‘facility’ for purposes of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) regulations proposed by FDA (Link).  The principle challenge in the facility concept is that it encompasses a huge portion of the low-risk activities farms, food hubs, and cooperative produce distributors normally conduct—for example storing, packing, holding and packaging fruits and vegetables; milling grains; and making maple or sorghum syrups.
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