Part 10 of Preparing Your Farm Food Safety Plan

– Meredith Melendez and Wes Kline

Part 10 of your farm food safety plan addresses field harvest and field packing activities. Your plan should document your actives and your pre-harvest assessment log. Field harvest assessment should be made the day prior to starting to harvest to ensure everything is in place to reduce the chance for product contamination. We covered the specifics of the pre-harvest assessment log in article number 6 of this series. If a field is harvested over several days each morning the assessment is repeated.

The following statements should be included in your Field Harvest and Field Packing Activities section: [Read more…]

Part 9 of Preparing Your Farm Food Safety Plan

– Meredith Melendez and Wes Kline

Part 8 of Preparing Your Farm Food Safety Plan

– Meredith Melendez and Wes Kline

[Read more…]

Part 7 of Preparing Your Farm Food Safety Plan

-Meredith Melendez and Wes Kline

The USDA Good Agricultural Practices Third Party Audit requires that certain activities on the farm be documented. These logs should accurately reflect what you have done on the farm to ensure food safety. If you do not write your activities down, the auditor will assume that the activity never happened. This documentation may be new for many growers, so making it as easy as possible for you to comply will ensure that the documenting happens in a manner that is acceptable to an auditor.

Remember you may not need a third party audit; it depends on who is purchasing your produce. However, everyone should have a food safety plan.

What packinghouse logs will you need to have as a part of your farm food safety plan? [Read more…]

Part 6 of Preparing Your Farm Food Safety Plan

-Meredith Melendez and Wes Kline

The USDA Good Agricultural Practices audit requires that certain activities on the farm be documented. These logs should accurately reflect what you have done on the farm to ensure food safety. If you do not write your activities down the auditor will assume that the activity never happened. This documentation may be new for many growers, so making it as easy as possible for you to comply will ensure that the documenting happens in a manner that is acceptable to an auditor.

What harvest logs will you need to have as a part of your farm food safety plan?

[Read more…]

Part 5 of Preparing Your Farm Food Safety Plan

– Meredith Melendez and Wes Kline

The USDA Good Agricultural Practices audit requires that certain activities on the farm be documented. These logs should accurately reflect what you have done on the farm to ensure food safety. If you do not write your activities down the auditor will assume that the activity never happened. This documentation may be new for many growers, sample logs are available on the Plant & Pest Advisory On-Farm Food Safety section under manual forms.

What field operations logs will you need to have as a part of your farm food safety plan?

[Read more…]