Building a Farm Food Safety Culture

The end of the growing season is in sight, and apple and pumpkin harvest season has begun. For many operations, this is a time of increased numbers of visitors on the farm. Those operations that add agritourism to their offerings know that sunflower festivals give way to apple festivals and perhaps peak with Halloween and pumpkin events.

Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and the Produce Safety Rule (PSR) both encourage food safety awareness on the farm for all visitors, volunteers, gleaners, and workers.

The operations that offer PYO opportunities can post their food safety policies on their websites as visitors often go there to find out what is ripe for the picking. The MDA food Safety Assurance Program offers signage (https://psla.umd.edu/extension/produce-safety/order-signs-farm-food-safety) to remind visitors of handwashing and other positive behaviors. Reminders to wash your produce are also handy in the farm market to send food safety practices home with the consumer.

Food Safety for Volunteers: Health and Hygiene, Gleaning, Harvesting and Packing
Video Length: 13:11 |  Dat:; March 20, 2021
Description: This video introduces basic on-farm, food safety handling for fresh fruits and vegetables and has been created for the volunteer audience.

As the season winds down, an operation may host volunteers to harvest for food banks as well as gleaners. This narrated PowerPoint (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjdTG67qHZA) is a good compilation of produce safety practices for those folks who are short-term on the farm.

If a petting zoo is a part of your enrichment offerings, it helps to provide handwashing stations to encourage visitors to wash before picking. Even more effective is to position the animal attractions beyond the picking fields to encourage visitors to pick first and pet after checkout.

Worker training sessions need to be recorded, and each worker needs to sign off on their attendance to the training session. Record templates for many farm activities can be found here (https://psla.umd.edu/extension/produce-safety/record-keeping-templates-1). Keep the completed records in the back of the farm food safety plan or with other farm records.

Time spent in worker, visitor, or volunteer food safety training is never time wasted. A strong food safety culture knits the farm operation together and gives all workers a sense of purpose and pride. Visitors may leave with the sense that farm-fresh food is also safe food.

This article appears in October 2023, Volume 14, Issue 8 of the Vegetable and Fruit News