EXPANDING FOOD SAFETY RESOURCES FOR LOCAL FOOD PRODUCERS IN CALIFORNIA

This project has the main goal of increasing small and medium scale farmers food safety knowledge and implementation of on-farm food safety best practices, which will reduce food safety risks. To complete that, this project has five main objectives, explained in more detail below. Objectives1. Expand Education Resources:Update existing food safety plan templates, recordkeeping logs, standard operating procedures files so they are aligned with FSMA.2. Organic/FSMA/GAP Audit Chart:Many of CAFF's farmer constituents are organic farmersthat want to understand the difference and similarities between organic certification, FSMA Produce Safety Rule, and USDA Harmonized GAP audits. By making our overview chart explaining the differences and similarities we will address this unique need (three topic comparison).3. Cost-share program:Small/medium scale, socially disadvantaged, organic, and beginning farmers that CAFF works with have expressed direct need for a food safety cost-share program in order to complete their water tests to prepare their farm for FSMA compliance and/or to offset the financial burden of completing a 3rd Party GAP Audit.4. Water Subpart Updates:We will create a farmer-friendly blog post explaining any new changes to the FSMA Subpart E Water section based on the anticipated release by FDA later this year of changes.5. Case studies:We will leverage our partnerships with family farmers across the state, the University of California Extension Small Farms team, locally based farmer serving non-profits, and locally based incubator farm programs to find farms well suited for our case studies so we can share the best practices those farms have figured out with other farms.