Non Technical Summary
Farm workers face difficulty in understanding complex food safety procedures and standard operating procedures and implementing them during their operations. Also, small and mid-sized and underserved farmers face greater barriers to food safety implementation due to limited knowledge of food safety principles, lack of proper training, the complexity of regulations, and lack of qualified food safety personnel. This project aims to shift from conventional PowerPoint based training format to more interactive ways of training to create best learning opportunities and encourage growers to implement food safety practices. This program will provide a short (3h) on-farm training to farm workers on Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs), Good Handling Practices (GHPs), worker health and hygiene, sanitation, risk assessment, and Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Produce Safety Rule (PSR) requirements using hands on activities posters and flipcharts. Different tools and resources, including video series, risk assessment tools, standard operating procedures (SOPs) templates, factsheets, and recordkeeping logs, will be provided to cater to the operational requirements of the growers. The risk assessment tools will help growers assess their current operations, identify potential food safety hazards and risks in their operations, evaluate current food safety practices, and identify practices to be strengthened regarding GAPs/GHPs and FSMA requirements. The program consists of on-site audits to assess and assist the implementation of food safety practices. Considering the high number of Spanish-speaking farmers and farmworkers in Louisiana, and Florida, our goal is to offer training in both English and Spanish. This project will also help develop and strengthen the food safety program of two minority institution (FSMU and SU) by utilizing the experiences and resources from LSU AgCenter to reach out to socialy disadvantaged and underserved farmers.

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
712	5010	1100	100%

Knowledge Area
712 - Protect Food from Contamination by Pathogenic Microorganisms, Parasites, and Naturally Occurring Toxins;

Subject Of Investigation
5010 - Food;

Field Of Science
1100 - Bacteriology;

Goals / Objectives
The goal of this project is to provide on-farm food safety training to small and mid-sized farms and underserved farmers in Louisiana and Florida. This project aims to shift from conventional PowerPoint based training format to more interactive ways of training to create best learning opportunities and encourage growers to implement food safety practices. This program will provide a short (3h) on-farm training to farm workers on Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs), Good Handling Practices (GHPs), worker health and hygiene, sanitation, risk assessment, and Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Produce Safety Rule (PSR) requirements using hands on activities posters and flipcharts. Different tools and resources, including video series, risk assessment tools, standard operating procedures (SOPs) templates, factsheets, and recordkeeping logs, will be provided to cater to the operational requirements of the growers. The risk assessment tools will help growers assess their current operations, identify potential food safety hazards and risks in their operations, evaluate current food safety practices, and identify practices to be strengthened regarding GAPs/GHPs and FSMA requirements. The program consists of on-site audits to assess and assist the implementation of food safety practices. Considering the high number of Spanish-speaking farmers and farmworkers in Louisiana, and Florida, our goal is to offer training in both English and Spanish. This project will also help develop and strengthen the food safety program of two minority institution (FSMU and SU) by utilizing the experiences and resources from LSU AgCenter to reach out to socialy disadvantaged and underserved farmers.Objectives:Objective 1: Develop produce safety educational materials for farm workers using posters, flip charts and hands-on activities covering FSMA PSR and GAPs requirements.Evaluate Produce Safety Alliance (PSA) curriculum and educational materials, FDA guidance documents, and publications and resources from the clearing house that could be used for flip charts and hands-on activities.Review current scientific and LSU AgCenter's on-farm research results related to food safety and use the research findings to develop effective training.Develop interactive educational material and tools, including flip charts, videos, fact sheets, record-keeping logs, SOPs templates, and risk assessment tools catered to the operational requirements of the growers, and compile them with the inventory on the LSU AgCenter webpage and link with collaborating institute webpage.Translate the educational materials into Spanish languageObjective 2: Deliver on-farm food safety trainings to farm workers and underserved farmersOffer on-farm training in both English and Spanish to cater to the cultural diversity and language differences among the growers in the state of Louisiana and Florida.Conduct hands-on activities and risk-assessment and post-validation audits.Evaluate the impact of education and training programs.

Project Methods
Objective 1: Develop produce safety educational materials using posters, flip charts and hands-on activities covering FSMA PSR and GAPs requirements.The project team will evaluate Produce Safety Alliance (PSA) curriculum and educational materials, FDA guidance documents, and publications and resources from the clearing house that could be used for flip charts and hands-on activities. In addition, current scientific and LSU AgCenter's on-farm food safety research results will be reviewed and the research findings would be used to develop effective training.The feedback from the growers collected through the partnership of relevant stakeholders, multi-county short evening meetings, surveys, and questionnaires as well as feedback that we received from our previous GAPs and GHPs workshops and FSMA-related training programs will be carefully evaluated to develop highly customized hands-on training material consistent with current FSMA PSR guidelines and requirements. The PSA curriculum discusses about produce safety requirements but does not provide detailed guidelines on viable technologies to fully comply with the produce safety rule requirements. We anticipate that developing educational materials into an easily understandable format and disseminating the technology through demonstration and hands-on training will increase the adoption of the practices to comply with the rule.The following steps would be used to develop the flip-chart food safety educational material:Identify the key principles of food safety that are important for growers and farm workers to understand and follow. During the brain storming session the team would go over the Produce Safety Alliance (PSA) curriculum and educational materials, FDA guidance documents, and publications and resources from the clearing house and highlight the information that could be used for flip charts and hands-on activities.Develop a series of illustrations that demonstrate these principles in action, using clear and concise imagery to make the material engaging. Each illustration would be based on scenarios and farming practices and follow a pattern similar to a PowerPoint presentation. The module would be divided based on the PSA growers training curriculum. The LSU AgCenter and Dr. Adhikari's lab has expertise on developing several posters with illustrations highlighting on-farm food safety issues (Figure 1-5)Write out the accompanying text for each illustration, using language that is easy to understand and follow.Use different colors and font sizes to make important information stand out and easy to read.Incorporate interactive elements, such as quizzes, scenarios, case studies, hands on activities to reinforce learning and encourage participation.Ensure that the materials are accessible to all audiences, including those with visual or hearing impairments, by using large, easy-to-read fonts and incorporating alternative formats such as audio and videos.Test the materials with a pilot audience to ensure they are effective and easy to understand.The LSU AgCenter has an extensive array of food safety educational posters,resources, and tools on hand (https://www.lsuagcenter.com/portals/communications/publications/publications_catalog/food%20and%20health/on-farm%20food%20safety/farm-food-safety-posters) that could be modified and expanded to develop the flip chart educational materials. Currently, we receive more than 5000 hits every year on this web page, which shows the popularity of this web page among growers and producers. Many of the posters are individual posters addressing specific food safety issues. Our plan is to develop materials that would highlight on-farm food safety risk and mitigation practice such as the "food safety for crop producers after flooding" which is available at the LSU AgCenter web page: https://www.lsuagcenter.com/~/media/system/7/a/2/b/7a2bd4c360aa0207f9ffb73fd770d485/p3706_farmfoodsafetyafterfloodingpdf.pdfNew customized on-farm food safety tool kit that includes flip charts, videos, food safety fact sheets, risk assessment, SOP templates, and record keeping tools would be developed. The toolkit will be uploaded on the LSU AgCenter food safety webpage and linked it to FAMU and SU webpage. The project team will work very closely with the Southern Center while developing customized educational material for the target audience. Social media will also be used to disseminate information to the stakeholders, collect public inputs and utilize thoroughly evaluated feed-back from past training programs and workshops while developing the educational materials for target audiences.Objective 2: Deliver on-farm food safety trainings to farm workers and underserved growersFarms in Louisiana that are growing crops that are consumed raw will be reached out to provide information about our training.An email distribution list for marketing will be prepared, using the LFVGA, LSU AgCenter and LDAF farm inventory data. and An announcement on "Improve the safety in your farm with our interactive on-farm food safety training and hands-on activities" posted. On-farm training will be schedule depending on the growers's preference and the date and time. Team members with LSU AgCenter's extension agents and students will visit the farm to provide training, assist farmworkers in implementing GAPs, GHPs, health hygiene, and conducting risk assessment. Hands on activities on cleaning and sanitation, health hygiene and systems-based pre-harvest agricultural water assessments would be developed specific to the farm and target audience. Follow up field visits will be conducted to assist producers with food safety program development and if require for on on-farm rediness review or a mock audit for GAPs/GHPs certification. Follow-up surveys and interviews will be conducted to assess the implementation of food safety practices addressing personnel hygiene, health, and sanitation, and identify points to be addressed during the field visits.Evaluation Approach: An objective-oriented approach will be used for this evaluation (Fitzpatrick, Sanders, & Worthen, 2010). This approach is used to determine the extent to which a program's objectives are attained. This type of evaluation focus on evaluating the development and implementation of the program, as well as participant outcomes. Following each training, a retrospective pre-test questionnaire (Pratt et al., 2000) will be conducted to measure the perception changes pertaining to knowledge and understanding of the course. The impact of adopting new food safety practices and the progress on implementation of FSMA Produce Safety rule will be evaluated every year.Web users' data collection: Website usage analytical programs (i.e., Google Analytics) will be used to track user engagement. Dimensions that will be tracked include user location (state, parish or county, city), language, user interactions, visits, connection speed, key word search, and exit page (last page user visited). Dimensions will be tracked using the following metrics: bounce rate (percentage of single-page visits), the number of entrances to a factsheet, the number of clicks on a tool and page views.