Beginning a food safety program on a farm or in a packing facility can be daunting. The Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association helped create the GA GAP Food Safety Program for just that reason. We are here to help fruit and vegetable producers, packers, and shippers with any food safety questions, implementing a food safety program, or preparing for a 3rd party audit. There are several resources available to you as you get started:
Food Safety 101: How to Get Started on Your Farm
This brief slide presentation from GFVGA is offered to help you as you begin your food safety journey. Please remember to take everything one step at a time. This can get over whelming very quickly. Call, email or contact the GFVGA Food Safety Coordinator if you have any further questions.
The National GAPs Program was established in 1999 out of Cornell University with the collaboration of researchers and extension personnel across the nation. They have created many educational materials to help understand and implement good agricultural practices on the farm. On their website, http://www.gaps.cornell.edu/, producers can find useful multilingual materials, guides, documentation examples and training videos.
How to Choose a Food Safety Company or Audit?
The food safety industry has gotten so big and diverse that everyone – producers, shippers, retailers & food service buyers – are confused as to which audit companies to use and what their audit scores mean. Many producers and shippers with multiple customers are being asked for multiple audits from different companies. Not only do these producers and shippers have to pay for every audit including auditor travel, the Audits Benchmarking Matrix shows every major audit contains 85-90% of the same questions creating unnecessary frustrations and burdens. The Audits Benchmarking Matrix is the product of research done by a subcommittee of the United Fresh Produce Association’s Food Safety and Technology Committee, on which GFVGA is involved. With this robust searching tool, users can:
- Search and compare various features that are critical to the quality, reliability and integrity of these organizations’ audit programs.
- Assess the quality features of an audit or standards setting organization.
- Make more informed decisions about which organizations’ audit, auditor and audit performance quality programs best align with your suppler quality programs
Click HERE for more information about this committee’s work, the Global Conference on Produce Food Safety Standards, or the Audits Benchmarking Matrix.
