Producers Asked To participate In Food Safety Survey

Producers, packers, and others are encouraged to complete a survey on food safety.  The Local Food Safety Collaborative, a partnership between the National Farmers Union Foundation and the FDA, has launched the survey to gauge how operations are able to comply with regulations under the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).  NFU’s Chelsea Matzen, project coordinator, says they have several areas upon which they focus.

“Worker hygiene, what kind of reports they keep, if there is a food safety incident, and kind of just seeing where they are at as well as questions about they would prefer to receive educational materials.”

Matzen said those materials could be workshops, webinars, booklets and much more.  The survey is part of a larger assessment that Matzen said will provide a comprehensive understanding of how aware farming community members are when it comes to food safety.

“A lot of people have questions about what the requirements are, so the big issue has been helping people understand what FSMA is.  And then another big issue will be, there’s a lot of costs associated with complying so we also want to work on helping people understand what resources they can leverage to come into compliance.”

Click Here to participate in the on-line survey.