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Produce Safety Resolutions
28 Plays9 months ago
Happy New Year! In this episode, Produce Safety Technicians Morgan Anderson and Allissa Conley talk about produce safety resolutions you can implement in the new year.
Funding for this podcast was made possible in part by the Food and Drug Administration through grant PAR-16-137. The views expressed in the posted materials do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the Department of Health and Human Services, nor does any mention of trade names, commercial practices or organization imply endorsement by the United States Government.
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Transcript
Introduction to Agri-Food Safety Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Agri-Food Safety Produce Bites podcast, where we discuss all things produce safety and dive into the rules and regulations surrounding the Food Safety Modernization Act Produce Safety Rule. Hi, everyone. My name
Meet the Hosts: Morgan and Alyssa
00:00:15
Speaker
is Morgan Anderson, and I'm a produce safety technician based out of the Ottawa Conservation District, but serving West Michigan. And I also kind of am partnering and neighboring to Alyssa.
00:00:26
Speaker
I'm Alyssa, I am the produce safety technician out of the Newaygo Conservation District, and I'm just serving the northern counties of West Michigan.
00:00:35
Speaker
So
Produce Safety Resolutions for the New Year
00:00:36
Speaker
today's episode, Alyssa and I, we're going to talk about produce safety resolutions for the new year. I hope everyone had a great holiday season and you're thinking about preparing for the next season. So I'm curious, what are some produce safety resolutions that we have seen from growers? And we're going to talk about some of those today and some produce safety tips and practices that maybe you can incorporate into your goal setting and enhance on your farm throughout the new year.
00:01:04
Speaker
Yeah. So I think setting attainable goals for the farms operation is awesome. And I think when people hear about produce safety, they might get a little afraid of like, Oh, I need to change everything. And, but that's really not the case. So I know some people may think like, Oh, we need to clean and sanitize every day or buy the best equipment, build a new wash pack, but really you don't need to do all of that right away. It's all about starting off small and working your way up to different things.
00:01:34
Speaker
for sure. And I feel like a lot of times farmers don't give themselves enough credit, like most farmers are doing really good practices already. So when
Enhancing Existing Farm Practices
00:01:42
Speaker
we're talking about produce safety, like you said, doesn't necessarily mean getting that really big fancy gold star. It's just they already have a gold star. Maybe they just need some some light shine on it. Yeah, exactly. So I think of setting goals in the new year is C,
00:01:58
Speaker
what your farm is already doing good and then maybe thinking of some easier, more attainable things to keep you going on your food safety journey.
00:02:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think goal setting is inherently like an organization tactic. So maybe just thinking about organization on the farm. How are you storing tools? How are you making sure that the tools for the bathroom aren't being used on other things like food contact surfaces? I had a funny story
Innovative Organizational Tips for Farms
00:02:24
Speaker
about this in a previous podcast with Phil Tocco and my mom cleaned the floors with Pine Soul.
00:02:30
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and the bucket that she put the pine soil and she put like watermelon in the next day and she served it to us and I'm like why does it taste chemically it tastes it doesn't taste right and she was like oh my gosh that's the bucket I used for pine soil yesterday so maybe just being aware of making sure things aren't going to be mixed up for different uses especially when if they're contacting the food and produce
00:02:52
Speaker
That's the easy thing I can think of. And I honestly, that'd be pleasing to have things like color coded. It'd be a gold star, but it'd be nice. Yeah, that's something a little more easily attainable too. I know I had a farm with you speaking of your mom and the bathroom, they have their wash pack and their bathroom and they have just red tape lining the cutoff point of any tools we're using to clean the bathroom.
00:03:17
Speaker
once this red tape is here, we're not gonna cross into the pack house and use them there. So I thought that was really innovative and a nice way to block it and something easy that other farms could be doing too. Another thing I was thinking of is using hanging hooks to keep poses off the ground to help with contamination. I've seen a few farms do that and thought that was really great and an easy way to kind of help with food safety
00:03:45
Speaker
Yeah. And it's a convenient thing too. I would also say making hand washing convenient, thinking of ways to facilitate hand washing. If there's maybe like a hand wash station at the end of the farm and there's a greenhouse at the other end, thinking about maybe getting a little DIY or portable hand wash station by that greenhouse. So people are doing that as close to harvest as possible. I think that would be a good idea too.
00:04:10
Speaker
Yeah, with the hand washing station too, I think really making sure that there's the hand soap and not just the hand sanitizer for it. Yeah, definitely go hand in hand and just knowing that sanitizer doesn't replace the cleaning and the hand soap aspect. So if we are going to be doing DIY hands washing stations, just make sure you include that soap as well.
00:04:32
Speaker
For sure. Another thing I saw recently
Tech Solutions for Farm Record Keeping
00:04:36
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on a farm that was kind of impressive to me was a record keeping tool. We talk about record keeping as far as assessing the fields before harvest to make sure there's no animal intrusion or poop laying around.
00:04:48
Speaker
as well as having a cleaning log and keeping track of when you're cleaning things and how and the date and who did it, et cetera. And so easy way that someone did it that I saw and I was really impressed by it was they had like a
00:05:03
Speaker
iPad or some kind of electronic tablet around and they had a Google form and so it was already pre-filled so they just had to click the worker, the employee who was cleaning, could just click the box of their initials, they could click what they cleaned and the method and then this hit submit and that date was recorded and automatically put into a spreadsheet. I thought that was really
00:05:26
Speaker
Yeah, I was like, Oh my god, I never even thought about that. But that's really nice because then you don't have to like write down every time the method, etc. Yeah, that's definitely the gold star. That's awesome. I think to just record keeping in general and the offseason of getting organized with those records. I
Conducting Produce Safety Risk Assessments
00:05:44
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know I have a few farms that are choosing to spend the offseason just organizing their binders and kind of getting everything
00:05:51
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back in order after the busy season. So even just making sure things are updated and in place is really good too. And I think it also can lead to more reflection about maybe some long-term goals of they're getting organized and they're looking at records and patterns of things happening on the farm. And maybe a grower can also take this winter cozy downtime to think about some more long-term goals as well.
00:06:16
Speaker
And I think the first one would be a risk assessment and having a technician coming out and thinking about their farm in a holistic sense. Cause I think most growers have that and they do that consistently, right? Like that's kind of an inherent part of being a farmer is always thinking about your operation, but to kind of take some attentional time for produce safety. And there's so many nooks and crannies within produce safety. So I don't know, I'm curious, so do you want to speak a little bit about the produce safety risk assessment process?
00:06:45
Speaker
Yeah. Like you said, farmers are always working and making things better and they know their risks. They know their operation. I think the produce safety risk assessment is just one of those, another good organization tool for them that they can do in the off season. It's really simple. We, all a technician does is they come out, visit, visit the farm, see what you got going on. And we'll kind of walk around and look at.
00:07:11
Speaker
your worker health and hygiene, your water, domestic animals, livestock, wildlife, soils. We'll just kind of take that holistic view, like you were saying, and really maybe help them hone in on things that they haven't thought about yet. Just get in there and see what's going on and help them out. And that takes the pressure off of them as well, having someone else come in and maybe help them a little more.
00:07:36
Speaker
That's something I hear a lot is when I'm on farm just chatting with the grower, they're like, oh yeah, I didn't think about it in that way. It just shines a different perspective on something that they are just so used to doing because it's in the routine. So it kind of makes people pause for a minute, which is nice.
00:07:53
Speaker
Yeah, and then after that farm visit and we finished that risk assessment, a lot of farmers wonder like, oh, how long does this take? And it's really nice to tell them like it's really up to their schedule. So even if they do get busy or maybe start focus on something else on the farm, we can always come back to it and help them when they're ready. So that's another good part about the risk assessment.
00:08:15
Speaker
I would say the first risk assessment takes a little longer for me sometimes just because depending on the complexity of all the different steps that they have on their operation and things like that. And also, I think on just a chatter. For sure. And so I ask questions about random things like, oh, I see that you trellis something like this. Like, why is that? I'm just curious. I just want to learn from them. I feel like I'm always learning from growers. So sometimes if it takes me a little longer, that's why I just like chatting people up, I guess.
00:08:45
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the Gemini in me. Yeah, it's always good to hear what farms are doing and just super interesting to see all the different practices and then we can learn from them and even help other farmers.
00:08:57
Speaker
And I think the produce safety risk assessment is also a factor in cultivating that food safety culture on a farm. Taking time to intentionally think about it and maybe streamline some processes on your operation kind of gives this message to everyone and the team that, hey, this is something that matters to us and we're going to take efforts to make sure that we're doing what we need to do. So I think that also is a step in that direction as well. And that's an important direction.
00:09:27
Speaker
So for food
Training and Creative Safety Practices
00:09:28
Speaker
safety culture on the farm, developing a worker training plan is another thing I think of as one of those more long-term goals. What have you seen people doing on farm for their worker training Morgan or what kind of things are available to help with that?
00:09:46
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's a mix of tools too, because like no grower wants to provide unsafe food for the community, right? But the employees are the first line of defense. So that really is where a lot of time is spent when setting up this culture of food safety. And I always see a mix of tools of like, a written policy, which we'll get to in a second food safety plans. And then always the hands on component of like, okay, I'm gonna now you're gonna watch me do this, we're gonna walk through it together. But there's also a lot of
00:10:13
Speaker
training opportunities too that I see a lot of growers encourage their employees of like hey
00:10:18
Speaker
There's this webinar coming up about this topic, about wash packs or something. Can you attend this for me? Or let's attend it together, et cetera. And speaking of which, MSU has this really great texting service where it texts whoever signs up for it once a week. And it's just little tips and tricks of produce safety. So like, hey, did you know that to clean bins you have to wash with soap and whatnot or with water before you sanitize? Because you can't sanitize a dirty surface.
00:10:46
Speaker
things like that and it's really nice to have like a weekly reminder because like we said earlier growers and farm workers are so busy throughout the season so it's nice to kind of have that little reminder throughout the week of like oh yeah I should be conscious of this during this task this week.
00:11:02
Speaker
Yeah, I really like the texting service too. I think it's a nice way to break up an idea that seems really big and maybe daunting. It's a good way to just have that daily reminder of yep, this is we're going to focus on hand washing today. Here's your reminder of how to do it properly. So I think that's a really good one.
00:11:23
Speaker
I like having visual posters. I think that's a good thing of make sure you wash your hands, wash your hands for 20 seconds, things like that, that are right there in your face that make it easier for people to do those things. For sure. Even with you pick farms too, where maybe it's not like an employee, so it's a little different training, but maybe just making visitors aware of produce safety practices. So there's one you pick, I'm thinking of where
00:11:51
Speaker
They have some livestock animals and they say, don't be a pig, wash your hands after touching the animals and just like making it kind of fun, but also informative at the same time, I think is a good idea. There's another farm you pick area that.
00:12:07
Speaker
since a lot of people come with their dogs, because that's part of the, let's go pick some berries and things like that. But having dogs in the production area isn't the most produce safe practice. And so this farm in particular had like a little doggy daycare center in front of their U-pick before the production field, which was really fun. And they, I mean, I would love to do that.
00:12:31
Speaker
Like, yeah, I'm a doggy daycare at this local Yupik farm. Like, that'd be fun, just petting people's dogs. Yeah, I think that's really cool, finding unique and more fun ways to practice produce safety. Switching gears, a part of those long-term goals may include what we love to talk about, food safety plans.
Importance of Food Safety Plans
00:12:50
Speaker
That's going to help with that food safety culture as well. So I think a good New Year's goal for farms is to start or even update their current food safety plan.
00:13:01
Speaker
Yeah, I would say that the winter New Year's time is also a great time to start thinking about food safety plan because production may be a little slower, it's cold out, so you can have a nice cup of tea or coffee or whatever your drink of preferences and get right in a way. So a food safety plan is basically this, a plan, a document that lays out your produce safety practices, your current ones, and or ones that you're going to implement
00:13:28
Speaker
this new season and that kind of lays out basically what you're doing and it helps you prioritize where you want to spend your time and resources in the next season when it comes to produce safety so maybe you're thinking about how you're cleaning your bins and you're like man those bins have so many holes they're really hard to clean maybe we can get different bins this year to kind of cut down on time for bin cleaning or bin washing
00:13:52
Speaker
And I think that's like a nice time to sit and reflect about current and things you want to implement this year. And it's also a nice training tool because then you have that and you can walk through it and read through it with a new hire or even people that have been on for a couple of seasons. If there's any changes, it's a nice way to communicate it and have it in one place for people to refer to throughout the season. So yeah, they're really just a great way to access any risk on your farms, define your practices,
00:14:20
Speaker
be prepared for consumer-based questions or inspections and audits. There's been inspector feedback that sometimes they can go on a farm and they can tell who has a produce safety plan because they're just really organized and they have things streamlined and they have good record keeping.
00:14:39
Speaker
Not that other farms who don't have that are not good at that. It's just that sometimes it helps grease the wheels, if that makes sense. Yeah, totally. There's a lot of templates out there. Maybe we can include that in the bio of this podcast link as some template plans because I think it's intimidating to start writing that without maybe a little outline.
Podcast Wrap-up and New Year Goals
00:15:01
Speaker
It's also important to tailor them. Yeah, and even though we're talking about this, we do want to say that a food safety plan is not required by the FISMA produce safety role. However, like Morgan was saying, there's so many benefits to it, and it's a very good organizational tool, especially when we're talking about setting these New Year's goals. Well, thank you, Alyssa, for chatting with me about produce safety, New Year's resolutions.
00:15:27
Speaker
Yeah, thanks Morgan. I think talking about New Year's goals is, it's always cliche, but it's always really good time to do it, especially up in Michigan when it's cold and they don't want to be outside. So I think these are all great ideas to get people started in the food safety world. So yeah, that was good. Links to anything referenced in this episode are provided in our show notes, which can be accessed on the website at c-a-n-r dot m-s-u dot e-d-u slash agri-food underscore safety.
00:15:57
Speaker
Thank you to everyone for listening, and don't forget to tune in next month for another episode of our Produce Bites podcast.