Food Safety Implementation The basic steps involved in implementing a food safety program include: Self-evaluation: With the help of Glades Crop Care, Inc. or on your own, this critical first step will let you know where your food safety strengths and weaknesses lie. Document development: Chances are that many of the requirements of a good food safety program are things you are already doing. The critical issue is whether you are documenting these good practices. Such documentation may mean the difference between survival and disaster should an outbreak result in your operation being scrutinized. Again, we can help with setting up such a document system. Program implementation may come as easily as drinking water or may involve considerable application of your skills in managing personnel and resources as well as some expense. On-site requirements, such as properly managing biosolids in your field preparation, keeping domestic animals out of active production areas, setting up a strict cleaning and garbage disposal program in and around field toilet facilities, establishing sound pest control in a packinghouse and refurbishing walls and ceilings with old chipped or flaking paint in cold storage areas may require considerable outlay. Fortunately, you can prioritize which items will need to be worked on first. Tackling the most critical issues first, then going after other details may allow you to pass an audit in an economical and timely fashion. As you proceed along the implementation route, we can again help in evaluating your progress. Auditing is a critical component. The final audit should only be called for when you are satisfied that your system is functioning satisfactorily. It should be scheduled when your farm, harvesting crew or packing/cooling facility has been operating under this system for some period of time. It will be critical to make sure that the various logs and forms that make up the documentation process are being used consistently and that whatever bugs may occur in the record-keeping system have been worked out. At the time of the audit, you will be expected to produce your documentation as well as to allow a complete inspection of the farm, crew or facility. Audit reporting may take several forms. Under the PrimusLabs.com system, the audit findings are submitted on-line. The graded results are usually returned via e-mail to the auditor within a day or two. The grower/packer can get access to his results from the auditor or from PrimusLabs.com via a personalized web page arranged for by the grower/packer and maintained by Primus Labs. Alternate reporting formats will undoubtedly be involved with the services provided through other certifying organizations. Certification, the use of the certifying body's logo and other privileges associated with an outstanding food safety program will also depend on the certifying body. You should establish early on exactly what level of public access to your auditing results you want, and the format that it should take. There are some costs involved in this final aspect, and we recommend that you, thoroughly investigate and understand these costs and requirements. There might be a fair amount of work involved, especially in getting older facilities up to snuff. After that, the mindset among all employees, which is established and maintained by management, becomes not only the main driver of the program, but also one of the greatest rewards! Where good programs have been established, growers and packinghouse managers alike report that workers recognize that they now have a better place to work, and they take pride not only in their work site but in the work they do as well. We all look forward to expanding this challenging line of work. Clients have already told us some of the benefits of having these audits performed. One of the greatest of these is being awarded a large contract by a major produce buyer because of scoring well on the food safety audits! Given the level of public concern about food safety and the litigious nature of our society, we can certainly expect that all the preparation, implementation, record-keeping and documentation and constant attention to details will eventually pay off, whether in the form of higher per-unit prices, new sales opportunities or continued business with established customers.