The Role of Good Agricultural Practices in Produce Safety - Microbial Safety of Fresh Produce - page 107

storing of fresh fruits and vegetables. The FDA Guide provides a broad range of
guidelines that address many of the risk areas that growers need to evaluate before
implementing a farm food safety plan and encourages growers to use proper manage-
ment strategies to minimize potential contamination. The Guide was written by the
FDA in collaboration with USDA and CDC to provide guidance and recommendations
about GAPs to fruit and vegetable growers; it is not a codifi ed regulation. The Guide
provides the following eight principles of microbial food safety that can be applied
to the growing harvesting, packing, and transportation of fresh fruits and vegetables
(FDA, USDA and CDC 1998; Beru and Salsbury 2002; Bihn and Gravani 2006).
Principle 1 : The prevention of microbial contamination of fresh produce is favored
over reliance on corrective actions once contamination has occurred.
Principle 2 : To minimize microbial food safety hazards for fresh produce, growers
or packers should use GAPs in those areas over which they have a degree of control
while not increasing other risks to the food supply or the environment.
Principle 3 : Anything that comes in contact with fresh produce has the potential
of contaminating it. For most foodborne pathogens associated with produce, the major
source of contamination is human or animal feces.
Principle 4 : Whenever water comes in contact with fresh produce, its source and
quality dictate the potential for contamination.
Principle 5 : Agricultural practices using manure or municipal biosolid wastes
should be closely managed to minimize the potential for microbial contamination of
fresh produce.
Principle 6 : Worker hygiene and sanitation practices during production, harvesting,
sorting, packing, and transportation play a critical role in minimizing the potential for
microbial contamination of fresh produce.
Principle 7 : Follow all applicable local, state, and federal laws and regulations, or
corresponding or similar laws, regulations, or standards for agricultural practices for
operations outside the United States.
Principle 8 : Accountability at all levels of the agricultural environment (farms,
packing facilities, distribution centers, and transportation operations) is important to
a successful food safety program. There must be qualifi ed personnel and effective
supervision to ensure that all elements of the program function correctly and to help
track produce back through the distribution channels to the producer.
Because a wide variety of fruits and vegetables are grown using diverse produc-
tion methods, the principles in the Guide are quite general. The Guide focuses only
on microbial hazards for fresh produce and does not address pesticide residues or
chemical contaminants. Prevention is the key to reducing the microbial contamina-
tion of fresh fruits and vegetables, and the Guide emphasizes that growers should
focus on risk reduction strategies, not risk elimination, because present technologies
cannot eliminate all potential food safety hazards associated with fresh produce that
will be eaten raw (FDA, USDA and CDC 1998; Beru and Salsbury 2002; Bihn and
Gravani 2006 ).
In 2000, several large food retailers around the country began writing letters to
their produce suppliers requiring that the fresh fruits and vegetables that were being
supplied to them be grown in accordance with GAPs (Bihn and Gravani 2006). In
addition to requiring GAPs, many buyers introduced purchasing specifi cations, letters