Initiating a Group GAP, Fresh Produce Safety Certification Program in Arizona

The growing demand for local and regional food offers an unprecedented market opportunity for sustainable small and midsized farms and holds great promise for increasing the access to healthy and affordable food for those that experience limited access.  However, participation in the chain of supply demands that farms demonstrate effective compliance with complex, and, for the small grower, often expensive food safety practices that have evolved in response to public health challenges largely attributed to the industrial food supply chain.  This requirement threatens to exclude the very farmers best suited to meet demand for local and regional food.  Internationally, similar market access issues have been addressed most effectively through the development of a group food safety certification process in which a “recognized entity” maintains an internal quality management system designed to implement, monitor, and ultimately assure implementation of GAP (Good Agricultural Practices) among member farms.  This system is then externally audited by a trusted third party to assure buyers that their food safety requirements are being met by individual member farms.  The development and evolution of food hubs, innovative businesses whose role is to mediate between small- and mid-scale farmer needs and those of buyers, including larger institutional, retail, and food service buyers, has showcased the need for a similar approach here in the United States.  One of the most important strategies to emerge from worldwide efforts to address market requirements for third-party GAP verification is the cooperative or “group approach” to food safety, based on the Quality Management System (QMS) methodology of ISO 9000, in which a group of farms develop shared quality standards and operating procedures and are audited as one body.  A number of lessons learned will be outlined in a 2015 Group GAP certification process piloted in Arizona.  Initial findings suggest that the overall collaboration of multiple entities, agencies, and stakeholders are needed to support the development and implementation of a USDA AMS Group GAP certification.