2018 ASHS Annual Conference

The Produce Safety Rule (PSR) was published by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the Federal Register in November 2015 as one of seven major new regulations under the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). The PSR covers activities related to the growing, harvesting, packing, and holding of fresh-market produce, with a few specific exemptions. Growers need to go through an FDA approved food safety training prior to being inspected. Currently the Produce Safety Alliance training is the only recognized training. After attending the course and developing awareness of the key PSR requirements, many growers still have questions about different ways that the PSR requirements might be met in their operations. To bridge this critical gap, the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA), in partnership with FDA, state departments of agriculture, and extension from Rutgers University, Michigan State University, North Carolina State University and the University of Florida, received funding to develop and deliver an “On-Farm Readiness Review” (OFRR) tool.

The OFRR toolkit contains several parts, including an exemption questionnaire to determine if any or all parts of the operation could be excluded from the PSR, a PSR decision tree to determine the sections of the tool that pertain to the operation, FSMA factsheets, and the OFRR resource document. The OFRR resource document consists of 12 sections that refer to each requirement of the PSR. Within each section, there is information on the regulatory requirement for each, examples of possible activities that may lead to compliance with each regulatory requirement, and ways that someone who comes onto your operation may evaluate compliance with each requirement (what they’re looking for) including if a record is required. Every grower participating will receive a copy of the full OFRR tool at the time of the visit.

To prepare for On-Farm Readiness Reviews to be conducted in each state training workshops are being conducted nationwide. These On-Farm Readiness Review trainings began in January of 2018 to train the FDA, the State regulators, and Extension personnel on how to conduct an On-Farm Readiness Review. The trainings are led by the On-Farm Readiness Review Extension Development team. Data is being collected to evaluate the On-Farm Readiness Review training workshops and actual On-Farm Readiness Reviews.