PSA Working Committee 2 - Common Issues

PSA Working Committee 2 - Common Issues

January 3, 2012 3PM EST

Meeting Minutes

1. Dial Toll-free: 866-906-9888
2. Enter Participant Passcode: 8140591

Attendees (16):

Betsy Bihn, Chip Simmons, Laurie Pivarnik, Luana Kiger, Wes Kline, Anastasia Becker, Sonya Salas Gutierrez, Michelle Smith, Cynthia Haskins, Marion Aller, Jim Rushing, Vicki Scott, Bill Hurst, William Kanitz, Ginger Nickerson, Diane Ducharme

Agenda:
I. Review Survey Results
II. Top Priorities for Curriculum
III. Resources/Educational Materials to Cover Priority Areas
IV. Final Recommendations for Curriculum Content to Executive Committee

I. Survey Results

· Everybody has had a chance to look over the results. Noticed that Recordkeeping as a topic might have been incorporated into each topic area.

· First Chart – Hazards and Preventative Controls – Common issues

o Top 3 – Worker Health & Hygiene, Toilet and Hand washing Facilities, and Produce Safety Plan

· 2nd Chart – Worker Health & Hygiene (workers and managers)

o Training and Culture – employees and managers – how to train, reporting illness

o Training Content – Handwashing and How to use facilities, reporting illness

o Recordkeeping - trainers need to keep, and workers

· 3rd Chart –

o Packing facility sanitation

o Pest control and attractants

o Facility design and harvest container storage

o Chemical handling

· 4th Chart – Toilet and hand washing facilities

o Sanitation, location, and number of facilities

o Design of composting/portable/alternative and Home facilities

o Emergency spill and collection of grey water

· 5th Chart – Produce safety Plans

o Creating objectives of the plan- risk assessment -

o Implementation of plan

o Assigning a person responsible, content selection, training and Documentation

o Recordkeeping, revision/keeping up to date

· 6th Chart – Traceability and recall – documentation necessary for traceability

II. Discussion about priorities

· Why is traceability so low on our survey?

· Focus on anything we may have missed through the prioritization survey

· Topic areas and ratings could use some collapsing; such as training, recordkeeping

Next meeting: January 31st – 3 PM

- Please review notes on challenges related to produce safety plans (9/13/11), see below list

- Log onto the WC #2 Google Website and review what documents we’ve already catalogued as resources, see instructions for logging on below

- Come prepared to match up our discussed priorities with specific resources that address the issues

Thanks for all your efforts and Happy New Year!

Diane

Challenges on Produce Safety Plan (Continued Discussion: 9-13-11)

· Computer literacy

· Fear (Earnest Hemingway “greatest fear is a blank sheet of paper”)

· More examples needed

· What is a sufficient plan – length and detail

· Guidelines only vs. regulations

· Dynamic process

· Cultural differences

· Language barriers

· Balance between having a farmer do their own plan and doing it for them– challenge is to make it interactive – farmers need to do themselves

· Overwhelmed by amount of information – finding balance to give enough details and not too much to overwhelm

· Suggestions on what to include into plan

· Group planning – local cooperative planning

· Not just having one person on the farm being responsible for the plan – getting the entire farm involved- Difference between a plan and a program

· Identifying who is going to be in charge of the program and create a company-wide program; make sure that that person has training and enough responsibility to stop production

· Educating farmers on risk reducing techniques

· Employee trainings

· Management teach by example

· Documentation – uniform checklist and documentation

Google Site Use Instructions

WC 2: Common Issues

1.) Go to https://sites.google.com/site/psacornellwc2/

You will be prompted to log-in. Please enter the following information.

E-mail: producesafety2

Password: producesafety

*If you already have a Google Account and would like to log in using that name, please click the link above, and then enter your Google Account name and password. You will be notified that you do not have access to the page. Click the REQUEST ACCESS button. I will add you to the permissions on the site and you will receive an e-mail of confirmation after I have added you.

1.) Once logged into the site:

Calendar

- Provides the most recent meeting dates and times for all 10 working committees

File Share

- To add a file, choose ‘ADD FILE’. Select ‘BROWSE’ to find its’ location on your computer. Enter your name and a description of what the file contains. Click ‘UPLOAD’.

- Do not delete files from the site.

- To access files, click ‘DOWNLOAD’ or ‘VIEW’.