Part 2 of Preparing Your Farm Food Safety Plan

-Meredith Melendez and Wes Kline

Farm mapping is a familiar thing for growers in New Jersey. Field maps, pesticide storage maps and customer maps are regular tasks, but mapping for food safety? Mapping your farm with food safety in mind allows you to manage the physical characteristics of the farm to minimize microbial contamination hazards.

Hand drawn maps are acceptable for an audit, but if you want a computer generated map, or an aerial image, there are several free resources that you can use. The easiest to use is the “My Maps” section of Google Maps . Just plug in your farm’s physical address, zoom in so the map shows the entire farm and print. You can then hand draw in the details required for the food safety maps or trace the prominent features of the farm onto a clean sheet of paper and add in the required components. Another good resource is the USDA Web Soil Survey . Your local FSA also has aerial photo maps that could be used. Simple computer drawn maps, like the ones shown in the Henderson Farm Plan, can be created using standard computer software such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or Publisher.

What map(s) will you need for your food safety plan? [Read more…]

Part 1 of Preparing Your Farm Food Safety Plan

-Meredith Melendez and Wes Kline

Having a farm food safety plan that is specific to your operation makes good business sense. Publicity about illness outbreaks traced back to farms has created a public that pays much more attention to food safety than they used to. Developing your own farm food safety plan can help to reassure your customers about food safety on your farm and potentially increase your market opportunities. A farm food safety plan will help prove to your customers dedication to on-farm food safety and show them the measures you’ve taken to ensure a safe quality product. The first step in writing a farm food safety plan is to create a food safety mission statement for the farm. [Read more…]