The Produce Safety Handbook for Buyers:
- summarizes the produce safety landscape in the Northeast, and
- helps buyer navigate each state's produce safety audit and inspection information.
To do this, the site provides:
- an interactive regional map that drills down to the state level,
- farm production statistics by state,
- glossary of terms with common audit and inspection language,
- state inspection and audit information in simple charts and tables, and
- regional content in a side-by-side display.
The goal of this site is to summarize the produce food safety landscape in the northeastern US, helping buyers to understand and navigate each state’s produce safety audit and inspection information. This is needed because the produce safety landscape can be confusing; there are a variety of produce safety standards and verification systems that can look similar in practice, yet are different in application for produce operations. As a result, market access requirements may not match grower obligations and documentation after being found in compliance following a FSMA Produce Safety Rule inspection, or from succeeding to meet an audit’s acceptance criteria.
This project is funded by the Food Safety Outreach Program grant no. 2019-70020-30338 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
This work was identified by the buyers workgroup at the 2019 NECAFS Annual Conference and Meeting.
The work was led by:
- Elizabeth Newbold, NECAFS, University of Vermont
- Hans Estrin, University of Vermont
- Wes Kline, Rutgers University
- Jennifer Matthews, Rutgers University
- Pete Land, Tamarack Media Cooperative (Burlington, VT)
We would like to thank the Northeast State Produce Safety Programs for their support in collecting and reviewing state audit and inspection information.
Finally, thank you to the advisory group of buyers who provided their time and insight. They supported the work with extensive review of the handbook and gave valuable feedback.