Produce Safety Rule inspections have begun and the industry is seeing how they are being conducted. The Western Agricultural Processors Association (WAPA) said official inspections for the Produce Safety Rule of the new Food Safety Modernization Act have been taking place for over a month. The first inspections are for large operations with over an average of $500,000 in the last three years.
WAPA Director of Food Safety Priscilla Rodriguez just talked to one of the California Department of Food and Agriculture inspectors to see how the inspections are going. “He mentioned they started inspections in April and right now they are averaging three to five hours per inspection,” Rodriguez said. “One of the things they mentioned was, there is nothing they have found that is egregious or really out of compliance. Their biggest thing is documentation.”
Rodriguez said the inspector noted that proper documentation isn’t just an action written down and it’s the details that need to be included. “They noted that there is a lack of documentation or not having all of the necessary components on that documentation,” She said. “So like on the cleaning log, the date, the time, whether it was cleaned and sanitized, who did it? So making sure you have all of your necessary components in your training document, that’s important and one of the things they noted people were deficient on.”
Stay with AgNEt West for more information on the inspections.
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