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Increasing Economic Competitiveness of Fresh Produce Growers through GAPs/GHPs Implementation

Achyut Adhikari and Kathryn Fontenot

Summary

Produce food safety has emerged as a critical agricultural issue and often presents a significant financial threat to fruits and vegetables producers. The LSU AgCenter’s on-farm food safety project helped producers meet the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Produce Safety Rule requirements and market driven Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) and Good Handling Practices (GHPs) requirements. Project activities targeted the socially disadvantaged and transitional farmers and producers through live workshops, web based educational materials and on-farm visits with extensional personnel. Five GAPs/GHPs workshops, one FSMA workshop and one Food Safety Risk Management workshop was hosted around Louisiana with total participants of 132 producers, processors and extension agents. Topics covered during the workshops were water quality and management, manure management, harvesting and storage, worker health and hygiene, record keeping systems, insurance requirements from buyers and third party certification. Three fact sheets and 14 record keeping logs were prepared and published in LSU AgCenter food safety web page. The fact sheets cover different elements of good agricultural practices such as Pre-harvest food safety risk assessment, Post-harvest handling of fruits and vegetables and record keeping system.

Details

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