Performing Department
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Non Technical Summary
Currently in California, there has been limited direct investment from the state to enable non-governmental employees to provide education to growers in California related to food safety and the Produce Safety Rule. To better support CA growers, many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and academic institutions have been able to provide produce safety education, in addition to technical assistance to growers, through receiving funds from federal and state competitive grant programs. From 2016-2022, these groups have acquired $7,675,071 in competitive funding. This was distributed across 37 projects and 18 organizations. While these groups have been successful completing their individual project goals, there has not been systematic coordination at a statewide level between these organizations. Leveraging efforts and sharing resources can enhance the impact of these projects within the state. Through assembling a consortium of food safety educators together in a formal manner, we will be able to facilitate peer to peer educator learning as well as draw more advanced training opportunities to the state. The main goal of this project is to establish the California Center for Food Safety (CCFS) to coordinate statewide efforts related to produce safety and food safety regulatory compliance within California. Additionally, the CCFS will facilitate the training of a cadre of food safety educators within California. The objectives are (1) Coordinate statewide PSA Grower and GAP training efforts across CA; (2) Provide one-on-one technical assistance to growers within the state to enhance the adoption of food safety practices; and (3) Creation of a trainer development program to support produce safety educators within CA.
Animal Health Component
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Research Effort Categories
Basic
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Applied
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Developmental
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Goals / Objectives
The main goal of this project is to establish the California Center for Food Safety (CCFS) to coordinate statewide efforts related to produce safety and food safety regulatory compliance within CA. Additionally, the CCFS will facilitate the training of a cadre of food safety educators within CA. To complete those two main goals we will focus on these three objectives:Objective 1: Coordinate statewide PSA Grower and GAP training efforts across CAObjective 2: Provide one-on-one technical assistance to growers within the state to enhance the adoption of food safety practicesObjective 3: Creation of a trainer development program to support produce safety educators within CA
Project Methods
Objective 1: Coordinate statewide PSA Grower and GAP training efforts across CA.Through monthly project team meetings, we will be able to share upcoming grower training courses, needs for trainer support, and other individuals or organizations that should engage with the project team. The PD and statewide coordinator will develop standardized registration templates to be utilized across the state to collect information on number of farmers, number of farms, and demographics to better understand the reach of the program. As appropriate, contact information will also be cataloged at statewide level to allow for more routine follow-up with stakeholders to evaluate behavior changes. Standard evaluation tools (PSA and/or WRCEFS) will be used in PSA Grower trainings. The PD and statewide coordinator will develop evaluation tools for non-standardized trainings in collaboration with project team members.Through communication within the broad project team, we can provide a larger pool of PSA Lead Trainers to enable the scheduling of PSA Grower trainings in underserved areas. We will be able to identify growers engaged in other statewide initiatives (see Introduction) and provide GAP training and guidance to facilitate their ability to engage in these programs. Also, the larger team will be able to meet the language needs of a broader range of stakeholders. The team also includes food microbiologists and food safety specialists that can provide information and guidance on emerging regulations (pre-harvest water Subpart E proposed revision and Traceability Rule) in trainings. Through coordination at a statewide level the team will be able to more clearly identify underserved regions of the state in relation to produce safety outreach and education. The project leads will engage in trainings within underserved regions where other project partners do not have reach.Objective 2: Provide one-on-one technical assistance to growers within the state to enhance the adoption of food safety practicesThrough previous USDA-NIFA FSOP projects, it has been noted that on site or one-on-one technical assistance (TA) is often required to support the implementation of food safety practices by small-scale growers. Also, many times this TA needs to be provided in a language besides English. The program leads will facilitate TA for growers as identified by project partners or through other means. Since CAFF and UCCE has significant experience in on-farm TA, these opportunities will be leveraged to train other project team members on how to conduct on farm TA. As Subpart E post-harvest water requirements are now being enforced and pre-harvest water requirements will likely be finalized in 2024, it is imperative that growers in the state receive training and technical assistance related to agricultural water. The project team will develop tailored tools for providing TA related to agricultural water. In addition, the project team has access to two microbiology laboratories that can run microbial water tests for growers.Objective 3: Creation of a trainer development program to support produce safety educators within the state of California Trainer development opportunities have been limited in California. Trainer development will be supported through Objective 1 by integrating new PSA Trainers in trainings offered by more experienced Lead Trainers, thereby helping to prepare the PSA Trainer to become a Lead Trainer in the future. Trainer development will also occur in Objective 2, by partnering less experienced staff with more experienced on farm food safety educators. The project leads will engage with the WRCEFS and PSA to bring PSA Advanced Trainer Trainings to California.CAFF has been part of a national consortium ("Diversified Farm FSMA Training Initiative" funded by NIFA FSOP Project 2021-7002035679) that developed an alternative food safety training curriculum to the PSA Grower training for growers to meet the training requirement for compliance with the Produce Safety Rule. This alternative curriculum is designed to be conducted in a field setting using the farm environment as a teaching tool and provides more clear distinction between Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) and regulatory requirements set forth in the Produce Safety Rule. This training was developed in response to a need for more specific implementation guidance for growers rather than a training that simply provides an overview of what is contained in the Produce Safety Rule. The curriculum was developed over three years and has been submitted to FDA for multiple rounds of review during that time. It is anticipated that this curriculum will be submitted for a final round of FDA review in Q2 of 2024 and that it will be given final approval in 2024. This project will serve as a mechanism to provide train the trainer opportunities for this alternative curriculum in California. Once this training is available it will give the project team the ability to choose between a PSA training, the alternative PSA training, or a GAPs training when providing produce safety educational programs to growers. Having multiple training options that build onto each other (e.g. GAPs first then alternative PSA training, then possibly PSA training), allows trainers to meet the grower where they are at with a "right-sized" training. This leads to better outcomes for food safety.Another major challenge in providing up-to-date guidance and information is the barrier in communication between those conducting applied food safety research and those working to translate research outcomes to actionable activities for stakeholders. To help facilitate and streamline the reserach to extension continuum, the PD and statewide coordinator will mine data on funded grants in CA to research produce safety. This group of food safety researchers will be invited to an annual conference to communicate their findings to produce safety educators. The project team will also work with these reserachers to help them develop Extension materials based on their research.While the project team will engage in evaluation of grower learning and behavior changes throughout the project period, a major focus of the evaluation work will be on the success of trainer development programs. Baseline data on trainer knowledge and experience will be collected at the beginning of the project period. This will include general knowledge of GAPs, the Produce Safety Rule, production systems, as well as experience conducting food safety training and PSA Trainer status. Throughout the duration of the project, numbers of project partners and collaborators attending team meetings, providing PSA trainings, engaging in one-on-one technical assistance, engaging in office hours, and participating in other train the trainer opportunities will be collected on a quarterly basis. This will enable us to track the dynamics of trainer outputs over the three-year period and identify trends (amount of train the trainer engagements needed prior to independent food safety training offerings, which type of food safety offering requires the most train the trainer engagement, etc.). Every six months, a standardized learning evaluation (retrospective pre-/post-test) will be administered via Qualtrics to all team members to determine knowledge gained around key concepts in produce safety. On an annual basis the statewide coordinator will conduct interviews with project team members to assess program outcomes. This interview will assess knowledge and confidence in food safety concepts and training, behavior changes (i.e. conducting new training programs, implementing new technique in training), and the program's ability to create a formalized food safety network in CA.