Whether a farm is just starting out or in the 4th generation, risk identification is always important for every farm. It is important to be able to identify risks on the farm because they have the potential to contaminate produce headed to the fresh market that can make the consumer sick, while also affecting the farm on the business level.
New farms may feel overwhelmed trying to grasp many new produce safety ideas at once, while more established farms may be comfortable in their food safety routine. Thinking of produce safety at the level of being able to recognize the risks that may be present on the farm is a good way to digest produce safety concepts, as well as make sure the farm isn’t just going through the motions of produce safety. As seasons go on things are bound to change on the farm. Workers may come and go, equipment will break down and get fixed, or something new will be purchased, or maybe animals will be introduced. These are only a few examples of why continuous risk identification is an important skill.
The Produce Safety Risk Assessment is a 19-page booklet that contains risk questions related to:
Worker health and hygiene
Water usage
Animals / wildlife / livestock exclusion
Manure / compost / municipal biosolids
Soils
Field sanitation and hygiene
Field harvesting and transportation
Produce packing – field or packing house
Produce traceability
Pesticides and other crop protection materials
For each question, your answer or farm practice will fall into either the low, medium, or high-risk category. From here you can begin to see where your produce safety efforts are a gold star, as well as where you may still have some work left to do. Some of the assessment questions have green boxes which indicate key produce safety management practices that are required to become a Michigan On-Farm Produce Safety Participating Farm. The other produce safety management practices in the risk assessment (not in green-outlined boxes) are educational questions to assist in conformance with other laws, rules or regulations. Farms are encouraged to adopt all the low-risk management practices listed in the PSRA, but only the green-outlined box practices will be evaluated for the awarding of a certificate of completion.
For farms that receive third-party audits, the PSRA is also a great way to see where those audits and the Produce Safety Rule (PSR) overlap and where they do not, making it easier to determine what things you may need to add to the food safety procedures on the farm. As audits and the PSR are ever changing, the PSRA booklet also gets updated and is a great way to help ensure that you are staying fresh in your produce safety knowledge and keep working to climb that ladder.
To schedule a produce safety farm review, contact your local produce safety technician. Your successful completion of this assessment, plan development and implementation, as well as review, will support the growing public interest in healthy local foods along with associated jobs and economic activity.
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Article by Allissa Conley, Produce Safety Technician
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