UPDATE: Certificate Received in Grower Farm Produce Safety

As the owner of a micro-farm and developing agritourism business, I attended on March 29 and March 30 a virtual course presented in partnership of Washington State University and the Produce Safety Alliance to learn about produce safety requirements for food growers under the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), including Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs), and how to co-manage natural resources with food safety practices.

This PSA course satisfied the requirement under 21 C.F.R. Sect 112.22 (c) that "At least one supervisor or responsible party for your farm must have successfully complete a food safety training at least equivalent to that received under standardized curriculum recognized as adequate by the Food and Drug Administration." One of the topics covered is Agricultural Water to include production and postharvest water (quality) and use. This topic is particularly important for a State like California that recently suffered from extensive run-off and flooding in fields otherwise used for food production. The run-off water was most certainly contaminated with non-treated sewage and fecal material. With this type of event, I think many of those impacted fields will have to remain fallow during much or all of 2023.

The handbook which came with the course also has information on how to develop a Farm Food Safety Plan. This regulation doesn't apply against farms that on average have annual sales in the last three-year period under $29,245.00 (adjusted for inflation). Otherwise, a qualified exemption is available for farms which sell less than $500,000.00 if sales are direct to a qualified end-user. A qualified end-user is defined as 1) the consumer of the food or 2) a restaurant or retail food establishment located in the same state or same Indian reservation not more than 275 miles away.

When the qualified status does apply farmers should write their own Farm Food Safety Plan for general good business practices.

I took this course and wanted the Certificate both as a owner of a micro farm and to get additional training to teach this same course as part of my adoption of Agricultural Law in my law practice and help other farmers and ranchers in their business planning and transfer the business to their heirs and beneficiaries.