Small Farm Food Safety, Fresh Produce—Instructions for Trainer

Small Farm Food Safety, Fresh Produce is a short, interactive training program that introduces food safety concepts as applied to fresh produce. The concepts are based on the FDA's Guide to Minimized Microbial Food Safety Hazards for Fresh Fruits and Vegetables. The program introduces participants to principles that summarize key concepts in the FDA’s Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs). These are termed the “PACE principles." Each letter in PACE represents an important idea for reducing microbial contamination: Prevention, Accountability, Control, and Education. The PACE principles are basically a simplified version of the FDA-GAPs used in the prevention of microbial contamination in the small farm setting. This training is not intended to be a comprehensive review of the FDA-GAPs, or the new Food Safety Moderniztion Act (FSMA) Final Rule on Produce Safety, but it does provide an introduction to food safety concepts that are important for small farmers. We hope the training will encourage small farm operators and their employees to “think food safety” in their work and to look for appropriate resources so that they can create food safety plans appropriate for their operations.