Increasingly, food safety certifications and plans are required to sell fresh fruits and vegetables, and the costs in time, labor, capital upgrades, and certifications are significant. While the USDA currently offers financial assistance for small growers (with less than $250,000 in annual sales), the Produce Safety Alliance (PSA) has a survey out to determine what barriers keep fruit and vegetable farms and packers from beginning or expanding food safety practices. This information will likely be used to argue for more funding from the USDA for financial support to growers and packers to implement food safety practices.
CCOF currently offers food safety certifications by and for organic producers to the PrimusGFS and GLOBALG.A.P. standards. Contact foodsafety@ccof.org if you have questions or want to discuss certifications options that fit your operation.
Fruit and Vegetable Grower Feedback Needed on Produce Safety Costs, Needs, and Barriers
The Produce Safety Alliance (PSA) Team and personnel from the Northeast Center to Advance Food Safety (NECAFS) at the University of Vermont would like to understand the costs and the barriers of beginning or expanding food safety practices on farms and in packinghouses to make educational materials more relevant to fruit and vegetable growers and packers. To do so, we have developed a survey to collect food safety information from fruit and vegetable growers.
What Are the Goals of This Survey?
To understand
- what steps growers have taken toward adopting food safety practices on their farm,
- the costs of adopting food safety practices (both one-time and reoccurring), and
- where growers have questions about food safety.
Why Should You Participate?
The detailed information that is provided will allow future educational materials to be tailored to specific challenges that growers are facing.
Who Should Participate?
We are looking for feedback from people involved in fruit and vegetable production and packing, including those who have and who have not adopted food safety practices. This survey should be completed by someone who has knowledge about the operation’s produce safety practices (e.g., equipment, finances, supplies, training, market distribution, and third-party audits).
Participation is voluntary and anonymous. It will take 10–30 minutes to complete the survey, depending on the farms’ food safety practices.
By completing this survey, you can choose to be entered into a raffle to win a $75 prepaid credit card. Ten participants will randomly be selected to win. The raffle will be held when the survey closes, approximately June 1. If selected, you will be contacted to confirm your mailing address and acknowledge acceptance of the $75 prepaid credit card.
Direct link to the English-language survey:
https://qualtrics.uvm.edu/jfe/form/SV_agW9o6VWOUCivCC
Direct link to the Spanish-language survey:
https://qualtrics.uvm.edu/jfe/form/SV_agW9o6VWOUCivCC?Q_Language=ES
Questions?
Please contact Elizabeth Newbold at elizabeth.newbold@uvm.edu with any questions. Thank you for helping to inform the national food safety landscape.
This work is supported by the Food Safety Outreach Program grant no. 2021-70020-35497 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Thank you!
The PSA and NECAFS teams