Source: UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND submitted to
ADDRESSING INCONGRUITIES BETWEEN FOOD SAFETY MANAGEMENT AND NATIONAL ORGANIC PROGRAM STANDARDS
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
COMPLETE
Funding Source
OTHER GRANTS
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1026662
Grant No.
2021-51300-34893
Cumulative Award Amt.
$49,998.00
Proposal No.
2021-02900
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Sep 1, 2021
Project End Date
Aug 31, 2022
Grant Year
2021
Program Code
[113.A]- Organic Agriculture Research & Extension Initiative
Project Director
Baur, P.
Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND
19 WOODWARD HALL 9 EAST ALUMNI AVENUE
KINGSTON,RI 02881
Performing Department
FAVS
Non Technical Summary
Food safety is a major concern for the entire specialty crop industry, yet while all food producers are subject to food safety rules, organic farmers can face unique costs and challenges in trying to meet both National Organic Program standards and food safety requirements. For instance, organic farmers must support biodiversity, but some food safety concerns pressure them to limit habitat and wildlife on or near the farm. Other incongruities include the use of biological soil amendments of animal origin (BSAAOs), inasmuch as these amendments are perceived as food safety risks, and water sanitizing treatments that conflict with allowable substances for organic certification. While the organic community has identified this as a critical issue, little data has been collected synthesizing the current experiences and specific research needs of the organic community. This planning grant will fill this gap by conducting a needs assessment utilizing a national survey and convening a multi-stakeholder summit to pinpoint the most challenging incongruities between food safety and NOP policies. These activities will determine which producers are most impacted (product sectors and regions), which food safety requirements are most difficult to synchronize with NOP standards, and prioritize which research opportunities can best address these specific conflicts. The long-term goal of this proposal is to provide organic growers and industry members with cost-effective and organic-compliant tools to mitigate food safety risk and retain third-party certification. Specifically we aim to collaborate with organic farmers, certifiers and researchers to develop a full OREI research proposal for 2023 submission.
Animal Health Component
80%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
20%
Applied
80%
Developmental
0%
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
7124099110025%
1360850107025%
6016030301025%
6102410308025%
Knowledge Area
601 - Economics of Agricultural Production and Farm Management; 136 - Conservation of Biological Diversity; 712 - Protect Food from Contamination by Pathogenic Microorganisms, Parasites, and Naturally Occurring Toxins; 610 - Domestic Policy Analysis;

Subject Of Investigation
4099 - Microorganisms, general/other; 0850 - Wildlife habitats; 2410 - Cross-commodity research--multiple crops; 6030 - The farm as an enterprise;

Field Of Science
1070 - Ecology; 1100 - Bacteriology; 3010 - Economics; 3080 - Sociology;
Goals / Objectives
Organic farmers can face unique costs and challenges in trying to meet both National Organic Program standards and food safety requirements. While the organic community has identified this as a critical issue, little data has been collected synthesizing the current experiences and specific research needs of the organic community. This planning grant will fill this gap by conducting a needs assessment to pinpoint the most challenging incongruities between food safety and NOP policies.Our long-term goal is to develop research programs that reduce the burden of compliance with multiple regulations, largely by equipping organic farmers and industry stakeholders with feasible, cost-effective, and organic-compliant tools to comply with food safety best practices and requirements.Our specific objectives are to:Gather current information on organic growers' experiences with incongruities between food safety requirements and organic standards;Assess the target audience's priorities related to research on reducing incongruities between food safety and organic agriculture;Conduct a systematic review of published data and ongoing research activities related to the identified priority needs;Identify gaps between priority needs and the current state of the science; andDevelop a full multi-regional OREI research proposal to address those gaps to be submitted in 2023.
Project Methods
This planning grant will conduct a needs assessment of organic farmers faced with tensions related to regulatory compliance of NOP and Food Safety risk mitigation requirements. The study will quantify and characterize the current challenges and needs of farmers by using a survey and direct dialogue with organic stakeholders. The survey results will culminate in a virtual workshop for organic stakeholders so that public comment can be solicited and incorporated into the development of a full research proposal. To help guide the proposed project and extend our reach throughout the U.S. organic community, we have assembled a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional advisory committee.Specifically this assessment will gather information on: (1) organic growers' experiences with food safety requirements, (2) specific conflicts encountered with NOP standards, (3) costs and burdens of compliance, (4) types and amounts of losses from safety concerns, (5) strategies organic farmers have undertaken to co-manage food safety with organic farming standards, and (6) research needs for assessing food safety risks and developing or validating new food safety techniques and technologies.The needs assessment will be conducted in six tasks, listed below. The target audience includes a variety of stakeholders: farmers, handlers, certifiers and research experts working with food safety and/or organic crops.Task 1: Convene the Core Team and Advisory Committee. Our first task is to convene our Core Team of Co-PIs and Co-investigators (Pages 2-4) and engage our diverse range of stakeholder advisors (Appendix 1). To address the unique food safety management challenges facing the organic sector, we have developed a strong interdisciplinary team of experts across multiple disciplines. The Core Team will attend bimonthly meetings to develop the national survey and help organize the research development workshop. The Advisory Committee will be offered an advanced draft of the survey for comment and will also assist in the organization of the research development workshop. The Advisory Committee will expand the reach of the survey and its results through their farmer networks.Task 2: Develop and implement a national survey and discussion groups. Dr. Baur, with input from the Core Team and Advisory Committee, will develop a web-based survey to gather data on the six needs assessment areas listed above. In collaboration with Washington State University's Social and Economic Sciences Research Center (SESRC, the largest survey research center in the western U.S.), Dr. Baur will distribute the survey to organic producers, certifiers and industry members (buyers). Our proposal and survey instrument will be submitted to the Washington State University's Institutional Review Board (IRB) in compliance with federal regulations to protect the rights and welfare of human subjects involved in the research.Task 3: Conduct a systematic review of published data and ongoing research activities related to the identified priority needs. The core team, in conversation with the advisory committee, will conduct a systematic review of the extensive published literature on organic agriculture and food safety that already exists in order to synthesize the "state of the science" on evidence-based food safety interventions and their effectiveness. A detailed search of USDA NIFA'sCurrent Research Information System (CRIS) will also be performed to catalog active and ongoing research into organic-friendly/organic-compliant interventions for food safety that has not yet been published. From this synthesis, gaps will be identified between existing and ongoing research and what the needs identified by the organic community via the assessment survey.Task 4: Host a virtual research development workshop to narrow research priorities and plan for a full research proposal. The core team, advisory committee members, and additionally recruited farmer participants and/or their representatives will convene for a 2 day-long virtual workshop hosted by The Organic Center. The virtual technology platform to be used will offer hands-on interaction by all meeting participants, it will support video presentations and slideshows, and will offer breakout rooms for smaller, themed discussions as needed. The overall goal of the workshop will be to develop an integrative research plan to submit as a full OREI proposal in 2023. To achieve this, we have five main objectives: 1) Present research priorities identified by the national survey and farmer roundtable discussion, 2) Present on-farm experiences through video presentations, 3) Narrow the focus to a handful of questions with testable hypotheses for which a full research project could be developed by a core research team, 4) Form appropriate academic sub-teams who could study the identified research questions in a multi-regional setting, and 5) Obtain commitment from academic team members to lead the writing and submission of a full proposal.Task 5: Communicate findings to the organic community via webinar and white paper. The Organic Center will host a webinar to present the survey findings to the organic community and solicit additional comments to inform the research development workshop. Webinars presented by TOC in 2020 received an average of 460 registrants. The webinar comments will be compiled and presented at the research development workshop. After all main activities, a final report will be generated as a white paper and distributed to organic stakeholders, publicized through similar channels as the survey to reach a broad audience.Task 6: Core research team will meet to write and submit a full OREI proposal.

Progress 09/01/21 to 08/31/22

Outputs
Target Audience:This is a stakeholder-led project, as organic fruit and vegetable farmers identified the initial concept for this food safety needs assessment among organic specialty crop growers. During the this planning project, we engaged with organic fruit and vegetable farmers in four ways: (1) directly participating in the project team (2 farmers), (2) participating in the project's advisory committee; (3) participating in listening sessions held by the co-PDs at various organic grower meetings around the country; and (4) through a national, online needs assessment survey. A secondary audience for this planning grant project has been scientists and other researchers working in related areas. So, for example, our team was in active discussion with a complementary project based out of Kansas State University and focused on post-harvest food safety for organic farmers. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We have engaged in outreach activities regarding the need for research into and policy engagement on this topic through both the survey instrument--which includes an introductory message explaining the purpose and objectives of this project--and through our listening sessions, which provide a more conversational format for interfacing with communities of interest, namely organic farmers. Based on results of the survey and listening sessions, we prepared a report onpriorities related to research on reducing incongruities between food safety and organic agriculture that was publicly presented through an online webinar hosted by The Organic Center with support from the Organic Trade Association on August 10, 2022. We had over 60 attendees. A recording of the webinar is publicly available here: https://www.organic-center.org/tools-organic-farmers-need-meet-food-safety-requirements-learnings-national-needs-assessment. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Gather current information on organic growers' experiences with incongruities between food safety requirements and organic standards; We developed an online, national needs assessment survey instrument in consultation with our advisory committee and the Survey Research Center at Washington State University, which began collecting survey responses in February, 2022. Two distribution methods were used: (1) direct email outreach to ~3,600 US organic fruit/vegetable farmers identified through the national USDA Organic Integrity Database; and (2) indirect outreach, i.e. convenience sampling, through sectoral and regional listservs with high proportions of organic grower members. We received 341 responses, of which 181 fit the filtering criteria for inclusion in the needs assessment. We conducted listening sessions on organic growers' experiences with incongruities between food safety requirements and organic standards with organic farmers at four grower meetings including at the Organic Trade Association Produce Council, the Organic Grower Summit, the MOSES meeting in Iowa, and the Organic Association of Kentucky. Assess the target audience's priorities related to research on reducing incongruities between food safety and organic agriculture; Based on results of the survey and listening sessions, we prepared a report onpriorities related to research on reducing incongruities between food safety and organic agriculture that was publicly presented through an online webinar hosted by The Organic Center with support from the Organic Trade Association on August 10, 2022. We had over 60 attendees. A recording of the webinar is publicly available here: https://www.organic-center.org/tools-organic-farmers-need-meet-food-safety-requirements-learnings-national-needs-assessment. Conduct a systematic review of published data and ongoing research activities related to the identified priority needs; Work on this objective is ongoing leading up to submitting a full multi-regional, Tier 1 OREI research proposal (see 5 below). Identify gaps between priority needs and the current state of the science; and Work on this objective is ongoing leading up to submitting a full multi-regional, Tier 1 OREI research proposal (see 5 below). We are collaborating with another team of researchers who conducted a food safety evidence synthesis study to triangulate between research, outreach, and extension priorities identified in our needs assessment and the current state of the science. Develop a full multi-regional OREI research proposal to address those gaps to be submitted in 2023. We held an initial planning meeting (12 in attendance) in mid-October, 2022 to sort through results from the activities described above and consider feedback from the August webinar. Two broad objectives for research, extension and outreach were identified. A second proposal planning meeting will be held in November, 2022, to further hone these objectives, identify key collaborators, and begin the proposal writing process.

Publications