Harmonizing Organic Standards and Food Safety Metrics

2016 Annual Report for EW16-015

Project Type: Professional Development Program
Funds awarded in 2016: $74,970.00
Projected End Date: 03/31/2018
Grant Recipient: Community Alliance with Family Farmers
Region: Western
State: California
Principal Investigator:
Dave Runsten
Community Alliance with Family Farmers

Harmonizing Organic Standards and Food Safety Metrics

Summary

CAFF has started this project and has begun to collaborate with principal collaborators. We are on target to complete our specific tasks associated with objective 1 by the end of March 2017. We have completed a project kickoff call with all of the principal project partners, sent them their sub-contracts, and discussed the overall project work plan as well as individual organizations’ work plans. As we are just in the first few months of this grant we look forward to reporting more details in the future.

Objectives/Performance Targets

Objective 1 of our proposal included four main action items. By March 2017 we will have found all relevant materials showing where the National Organic Program’s standards and food safety metrics have potential conflicts. We have drafted an electronic survey that will be sent to organic inspectors via our project partners (CCOF, Oregon Tilth), to determine in what areas organic inspectors could use the most support and resources. Once we receive survey results (February) the principal collaborators group will review the results and determine what topics we will focus on as we create materials, presentations, and webinars for this grant. CAFF and Oregon Tilth have started to schedule the two Oregon workshops.

Accomplishments/Milestones

At this point we are still in the planning and creation mode for our webinars, workshops, brochures, fact sheets, and short publications. More updates on these to come in the future.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

We provided three main outcomes in our proposal. Again, because we are only a couple months into this grant we have not achieved any of these outcomes yet. We are on target for educating and providing resources to organic professionals, Cooperative Extension advisors, and small organic farmers (indirectly).