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The Ag Water Rule: What We Know and Don't Know
18 Plays1 year ago
Phil Tocco, Emily Hollingsworth, and Morgan Anderson, members of the Michigan On-Farm Produce Safety team, recently met up at the Northwest Orchard and Vineyard Show to discuss what growers need to know about the Agricultural Water Rule. In this episode, they provide an overview of the Ag Water Rule, and discuss what is currently known and unknown about the proposed rule.
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 Produce Safety
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. Hello, I'm Morgan Anderson. I'm the Produce Safety Technician based in Ottawa County. Hey there, I'm Emily Hollingsworth. I am a Produce Safety Specialist with the Michigan Department of Ag and Rural Development.
00:00:25
Speaker
And I cover the whole state of Michigan, working on consistency of the application of the produce safety rule. I work with our regulators at MDARD in addition to our produce safety technicians with six different conservation districts, and also a lot of educators from MSU Extension. I'm Phil Toko. I'm with Michigan State University Extension. I'm based in Jackson County, but I cover the entire state with respect to on-farm produce safety.
00:00:55
Speaker
Thank you everyone for introducing yourselves.
Understanding the Ag Water Rule
00:00:57
Speaker
Um, today's podcast, we're going to discuss ag water and the upcoming new rule from the FDA relating to produce safety. But before we hop into that, I want to ask both you, Phil and Emily, could you provide some context and history about what is the ag water rule? Uh, so the ag water rule is actually one of several subparts of the FSMA produce safety rule.
00:01:22
Speaker
A lot of growers I hear just refer to that as FSMA. So the Ag Water Rule is just one part of that FSMA Produce Safety Rule. The Produce Safety Rule is really a preventive rule to reduce risks of biological contamination on produce farms. And it's the first preventive rule that puts out kind of mandatory regulation of produce farms.
00:01:50
Speaker
The Ag Water Rule itself has been on hold for a few years. FDA has been reworking the rule based on feedback from stakeholders and growers on what was initially put out. Ag Water itself is water that touches the harvestable portion of the crop and any food contact surfaces or hands, since hands also touch food contact surfaces
00:02:18
Speaker
and the produce itself. So really the Ag Water Rule is a rule that is specific to water that is touching produce, so irrigation, crop protection sprays, any post-harvest water if you're rinsing or cooling or dunking your produce, any of those kind of things, and then water that you're using for hand washing.
00:02:42
Speaker
The Ag Water Rule applies to farms that are what we would call covered by this FSMA Produce Safety Rule. And so there's specific requirements and lots of resources to help you figure out whether you're covered, which means you're eligible for an inspection under the Produce Safety Rule. But generally, they are produce farms that are selling a minimum dollar amount of produce that is typically eaten raw.
00:03:11
Speaker
And so you can feel free to reach out to any of us or use MDARD's grower tool, which is kind of like a short survey to give you an idea of whether you're covered and whether this ag water rule would apply to you or not at all. I've done that myself a couple of times of like, hypothetical answering to see what is covered and not covered, because even reading through the rule itself, sometimes a tentacle. So I'm like, that tool is really helpful to just walk through and it tells you, yes, you are or no, you're not.
Audits and Water Testing Regulations
00:03:39
Speaker
You got anything to add Phil to that? Thank you, Emily. That was a great response. I think the one thing that it's important to understand is initially the rule was that the beginnings of the rule really started with testing water and very much came out of
00:03:58
Speaker
audits where auditors were requiring all growers to test, that were being audited to test their water. So a lot of the early bit of what was proposed was based on water testing.
00:04:15
Speaker
Makes sense. So if it doesn't touch the hard, visible portion of the crop, growers don't worry about it, right? It's not something that needs to be of concern. Just clarifying question for myself. It's not considered, it's not considered regulated. So I mean, it wouldn't be regulated. Whereas with audits, any water, irrespective of whether it touches the harsh portion of the crop needs to be tested. Yeah. And I would say from a regulatory standpoint,
00:04:43
Speaker
There are no specific rules that govern non-ag water, other than if it touches produce and it's full of poop and you end up with contaminated produce because of it, whether it was intended to touch it or not, ultimately that makes it bad water, so to speak, and regulated.
Harvest Water Regulation Explained
00:05:08
Speaker
One other thing to mention is that the ag water rule
00:05:11
Speaker
splits water up into two different portions. And one is pre-harvest water and the other is harvest and post-harvest water. So the pre-harvest water includes things like I mentioned before, like irrigation water, frost protection, any water that's mixed with your crop protection sprays, those kinds of things. Whereas the harvest and post-harvest water is regulated slightly differently in a different part of the rule.
00:05:40
Speaker
And that includes any water that's applied to the produce during or after harvest, like the dunk tanks, rinses, hand-washing water, and cleaning and sanitizing of food contact surfaces. So kind of the basics from what I'm understanding is there's pre-harvest and harvest and post-harvest water, but they're both ag water. So talking about ag water, what bottom line do growers need to know relating to the upcoming rule?
00:06:07
Speaker
So really the important thing for us to know is really the distinction between harvest post-harvest water and pre-harvest ag water is that the harvest and post-harvest water portion of the rule is now finalized as of a couple of months ago and it's largely unchanged from what was in there before. So
00:06:30
Speaker
For most of our growers, what they're currently doing is what they should continue doing and kind of a very shortened diversion of what the requirements here are that you need to have no detectable generic E. coli in your water and you can either test it yourself or get your water from a public source and provide proof of their testing. So that no detectable generic E. coli, if I turn in a test,
00:06:59
Speaker
to the water, to the tool water lab. Is non detect okay? Just a non detect? You do not have to calculate
00:07:10
Speaker
any means, geometric means, or have these water quality profiles or anything anymore. It is drastically simplified to the pass-fail, generic E. coli, non-detect. There are still specific tests that have to be, you know, it's a specific test that the lab has to run and go ahead and reach out to your produce safety technician, someone at MSU Extension, or even somebody, one of the regulators, and we're happy to make sure that
00:07:38
Speaker
whatever test your lab is doing is one that's approved, but they've all pretty much come into line now. And there's a nice national water lab map too that's out there. Yeah, I was going to plug that and also plug in possible cost share if the grower can't afford to get that water test. You know, reaching out to the pro safety techs might be something they would be willing and able to help the growers cover cost of.
00:08:06
Speaker
In addition to that no detectable generic E. coli in your water, you are not allowed to use untreated surface water for harvest or post-harvest water ever, even if you do sample it and it comes back non-detect.
Pre-Harvest Water Rule Status
00:08:23
Speaker
If it's untreated surface water, you can't use it for harvest or post-harvest. And then in addition, you'll need to do some sort of annual water distribution system check. Nothing formal, but check your distribution system, make sure that your well is in good standing and everything looks good at least once a year. No back siphoning is happening. There's checks from that. They're working well, stuff like that. Yeah.
00:08:49
Speaker
There's been a term thrown around since I started that I feel like it's still kind of ambiguous in my mind is water assessment. Is that dealing with that's only pre harvest, right? Yeah, so the ag water assessment is associated with pre harvest water. So if you've heard that term, thrown out that is specific to pre harvest water, right? And that's currently in a proposed state. Okay. And so the FDA proposed
00:09:19
Speaker
Ag water rules surrounding pre-harvest water. And there was a period of comment and that was last year. We held a lot of meetings in conjunction with MSU Extension to kind of get the word out and try to get comment back to FDA on that. That rule has not yet been finalized.
00:09:45
Speaker
Not something quite yet to worry about for growers as of now, possibly. Not something to get stressed out about yet. When it is finalized, there's going to be ample time after the finalization before it's implemented. We will make sure to have resources for growers surrounding if an ag water assessment is part of it, which we don't know for sure. Probably headed in that direction, but we really don't know what the final rule will look like.
00:10:12
Speaker
So if that is a part of it, we will definitely have tools that are developed
Challenges of the Water Rule
00:10:18
Speaker
and we'll be able to offer lots of assistance. Thank you. So bottom line, as I'm understanding is no
00:10:27
Speaker
detectable generic E. coli. Phil, do you have anything to add to that as well? I think that's the most important thing. The big thing to remember here is the fact that if you are required to have an audit as a prerequisite for sale, those rules that the buyer requires do not change. What we are only talking about are the minimum standards for growing the product.
00:10:54
Speaker
So if you are still getting audits, there's going to be requirements, possibly a monthly requirement to test your water that you still have to do, even if these rules change. That kind of leads into my next question, Phil, is what are some aspects of the rule that we do not know yet? Are there any challenges around those unknowns? But even like you said, part of the knowns are even having some challenges.
00:11:17
Speaker
So the water assessment is something that there's not a whole lot of science behind. There's some science behind, but the idea with the water assessment is really to link the hazards that you see with the risks, the ones that are actual risks on your farm, and then figure out whether or not those risks are high enough to warrant some kind of action on your part.
00:11:42
Speaker
So at this point, no one should be trying to jump the gun on this. Nobody should try and do this in advance and be proactive. Kind of like what Emily was saying, like we will develop the tools, there will be things in place to help people kind of do that assessment. Because it will take a lot of education, I think, of growers to kind of recognize, hey, what is the hazard and what the proper steps, next steps are.
00:12:06
Speaker
Yeah. And since the rule hasn't been finalized yet for pre-harvest water, even the provision numbers for harvest and post-harvest water haven't been finalized yet, really. Like I said, the rule is largely unchanged for that harvest post-harvest, but we don't even have a way to cite those kinds of things yet. And so this is really a work in progress and it is not something to fret about. It is not something to go.
00:12:35
Speaker
and start changing everything that you're doing on farm. It's something that we are working with growers on and that we have lots of resources available for. So while this is kind of a challenge, that we don't have everything in writing yet and we don't know exactly what the future will hold, that really allows us to give extra time to the growers and to work on things and making small changes on farm.
Resources for Growers
00:13:02
Speaker
That kind of being said, my last question for you guys is, given all these upcoming changes and these may or may not be mentioned in upcoming newsletters, but do any of you have any resources or places that you are directing farmers to besides the wonderful MSU extension and produce safety techs?
00:13:19
Speaker
Definitely keep on the MyOps website. If you are not in touch with your local produce safety technician, absolutely get in touch with your produce safety technician. We are now fully staffed and they will be around. Yeah. Yeah, I would definitely say, you know, reach out to us directly. It's great. We have very approachable staff here, whether they're on the regulatory side or on the technical assistance or education side.
00:13:46
Speaker
So feel free to reach out to me or to Phil directly or any of the technicians. And when Phil says the MyOps page, that is M as in mother or M as in Michigan, I suppose. I-O-F-P-S and that stands for Michigan on farm produce safety.
00:14:05
Speaker
and that's .org. You can also check out Michigan.gov forward slash produce safety and MSU's agri-food safety website. It's usually the first one that comes up when you Google the word agri-food safety.
00:14:21
Speaker
Yeah, and something that I say a lot is that every farm is unique. Yeah. And really to understand where you stand and where your farm stands, the best thing to do is talk to somebody individually. It's great to, you know, take a cursory look at what we have on our websites or look at some of our field guides or any of those things. But really talking to somebody is going to get you the best information
00:14:46
Speaker
for what will work for your farm because you know your farm better than anybody else and really the rule can be tailored individually to each farm. That's the kind of beauty and the kind of is vague enough sometimes too vague but also you can choose what works best for you which is nice.
00:15:05
Speaker
And part of the reason why we set up the network in the state was to allow a grower to sit down with someone. So if it's not your tech, if it's not Emily or it's not me, there should be someone out there that can help you. And like we said, this is largely unchanged from what was already required of covered farms. Any farms that are audited are already doing this and more.
00:15:34
Speaker
essentially no change from status quo.
The Importance of Safe Water in Michigan
00:15:37
Speaker
I would just like to finish up by saying that Michigan is really focused on safe water. All of these rules and compliance dates can be confusing and distract us really from the important questions.
00:15:49
Speaker
So make sure as a grower that you're really asking yourself these questions. Do I know that my water is contaminated? Do I think that my water might be contaminated? If the answer is yes, or really even that you don't know, do something about it, anything about it. And that's really the bottom line here. We have a host of people that can offer free and confidential assistance in getting you there. And that's really what this is all about.
00:16:14
Speaker
safe water, safe produce, and keeping Michigan safe.
00:16:22
Speaker
We're out of the Great Lakes state. Yup. You need to keep those waters safe. For sure. 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. Thank you to everyone for listening. And don't forget to tune in next month for another episode of our Produce Bites podcast.