Improving public health protection through coordinated efforts among three state agencies to assess, educate, train and oversee the implementation of the FDA Produce Safety Rule.

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New Hampshire Produce Safety Rule Implementation Proposal PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT: The State of New Hampshire DHHS/DPHS will educate and implement FDAs Produce Safety Rules through coordinated efforts among three state agencies/organizations. Working as a collaborative team, the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension (UNHCE) and the Department of Agriculture, Markets and Food (DAMF), will assess, educate, train and oversee the implementation of the FDA Produce Safety Rule (PSR) at the state and local level. We will develop a farm friendly food safety framework that supports a well-informed food production community about good agricultural practices that can improve produce safety. Through the education and implementation of established safe growing and harvesting practices for all farms, the goal is to improve public health protection and minimize the risk of foodborne illness. The promotion of food safety best practices will provide reasonable assurances that the produce is not adulterated by preventing the introduction of biological hazards during the growing, harvesting, packing and holding of produce. The benefit to farms of adopting PSR practices will be strengthened public confidence in locally produced fruit and vegetables. The expected outcomes of the proposed project is to increase the safety of the produce supply by teaching and enforcing safe growing practices consistently across various levels of produce producers. Ultimately this can result in a reduction of food borne illness for consumers of produce. The specific objective is twofold: 1. To establish a system of education, training and usage of improved safe growing practices 2. To assess, measure and enforce safe growing practices for the farms to which the PSR applies