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.