Decision trees can ease the process of creating your farm food safety plan. Decision tree topics include all of the important components of a food safety plan.  Access them at the National GAPs Program website.

These decision tress will:

1. Help you identify risks and practices that reduce risks;
2. Prioritize the implementation of practices to use limited resources wisely;
3. Familiarize you with the terms and methods necessary to understand and follow requirements and expectations for food safety from buyers, farm markets, schools, and federal regulations.

Cornell, University of Minnesota, and University of Tennessee, developed these decision trees.

The newly revised proposed Produce Rule is drastically different than the original provisional rule. Growers are encouraged to comment on the changes, and respond to several questions that the FDA has about animal based compost requirements. Please consider commenting – comments are due by December 15, 2014.

In the previously published FSMA proposed Produce Rule, regulations for animal based composts required a wait period of nine months for raw manure applications (not composted or composted in a non-approved manner). The revised rule recognizes the need for additional research and risk assessments, and has withdrawn the 9-month interval between the application of raw manure and crop harvest. This rule will be amended once sufficient research has been conducted and evaluated. The FDA has stated that “At this time, the FDA does not intend to take exception to farmers complying with the USDA’s National Organic Program standards, which call for a 120-day interval between the application of raw manure for crops in contact with the soil and 90 days for crops not in contact with the soil.” The 45-day interval between application of compost and crop harvest, specific to previously specified composting methods, has also been withdrawn.

The FDA is seeking comments on requiring the adherence to the NOP 120-day interval standards, the prevalence of animal based manures in composts, and information on barriers that will be faced for farms transitioning from raw animal manure use to only composted animal manures.

The newly revised Produce Rule is drastically different than the original provisional rule. Growers are encouraged to comment on the changes, and respond to several questions that the FDA has about water microbial requirements. Comments are due by December 15th.

The Produce Rule previously required farms to sample surface water used for irrigation (water that would come in contact with the harvestable portion of the plant) every seven days. For example: irrigation pond water that is used for overhead irrigation of blueberries or pond water that is used in pesticide application sprays on tomatoes. This requirement has changed, growers will need to create a baseline survey of the surface water and conduct annual sampling of that water. To create the baseline survey a farm using surface water would need to sample a minimum of 20 times over a two year period. The geometric mean will need to be calculated from these 20 samples to identify the [Read more…]

Comments on the revisions made to the produce safety rule are due on December 15th. Regular posts will be made to the Plant and Pest Advisory focusing on the changes that have been made. Please consider commenting on the produce rule!

The way that the FDA defines “farm” is important in determining what types of production activities would qualify a farm to comply with additional regulations, specifically the Preventive Controls FSMA rule. Compliance with the Preventive Controls rule would require a Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point plan.  The revisions regarding these definitions are now much more specific and offer broader exemption of certain farm activities from the Preventive Controls rule. Previously a “farm” would have been required to register as a food facility and comply with the Preventive Controls rule if it packed or held raw agricultural commodities grown on another farm. Packing and holding are now considered normal farm activities and would not, in most cases, require a farm to comply with the Preventive Controls rule. Additionally, gathering, washing, trimming of outer leaves of, removing stems and husks from, sifting, filtering, threshing, shelling and cooling of raw agricultural products are examples of harvesting and are also exempt from the Preventive Controls rule. The transformation of a raw agricultural commodity into a processed food would be still be subject to the Preventive Controls rule.

Comments on the revisions made to the produce safety rule are due on December 15th. Regular posts will be made to the Plant and Pest Advisory focusing on the changes that have been made. Please consider commenting on the produce rule!

Changes to Calculating Farm Sales for FSMA Compliance

The previous version of the produce rule set compliance thresholds based on total food sales values for a farm operation. This included all human and animal foods sold at the farm. The revised rule states that compliance threshold values will be determined by “average annual monetary value of produce.” This change was made as a result of many comments on the subject and will reduce the number of farms in New Jersey that will be required to comply with FSMA.

The revised produce rule is now available online and the FDA is accepting comments on the revisions.
To access the rule and comment visit the FDA FSMA Produce Rule webpage.  The comment period will remain open until December 15, 2014.