On-farm Food Safety Documentation: How Much Is Enough?

May 04, 2017

A big reason to have a food safety plan is to provide a proof of commitment to food safety on the farm. So when an auditor or inspector asks that something be documented, the follow-up question from a grower is usually, “How much is enough?”

The best answer is it depends. The level of documentation you need depends on the size of your operation, the requirements of your audit scheme and how critical the particular activity is to ensure the safety of the product.

A larger operation that uses flume tanks to process product may need to keep a record of the water changing schedule of the flume, an hourly concentration of the sanitizer in the flume water, results of a frequent pH test and water testing records, in addition to standard operating procedures (SOPs) for each of these activities. A smaller operation may only use water once per batch of washing, necessitating one record of when water was changed.

Different audits require different levels of recordkeeping. In one situation, including the monitoring of toilets for adequate supplies into a pre-harvest checklist may be adequate for the particular audit. Other audits specify growers must have a separate record for stocking the toilet or sanitation units. Including this information in a pre-harvest checklist likely will not be acceptable under those audit schemes. Even within a particular audit scheme, there may be differences among auditors that can prompt a more aggressive recordkeeping need.

If a particular activity is critical to ensuring the safety of the fresh produce you are growing, expect that it will require more intensive recordkeeping. Worker health and hygiene is critical to ensuring produce is not contaminated. As such, training logs, blood and bodily fluids logs, worker policies, disciplinary policies and records of their activity as well as traceability as to who harvested what product are all essential components to ensuring workers are not serving as a source or route of contamination. By contrast, a simple log of cleaning and sanitizing totes or buckets and a pre-harvest check to verify they are clean at the commencement of filling may be all that is required to address the relatively small risk of sanitary food contact surfaces pre-harvest.

Source:msu.edu

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.