Designing a Produce Safety Program in the State of Utah in Preparation of Implementation of the FDA Produce Safety Rule

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Project Summary/Abstract Organization: State of Utah, Department of Agriculture and Food Funding Opportunity Announcement Number: PAR-16-137 The mission statement for the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food (UDAF) is to promote the healthy growth of Utah agriculture, conserve our natural resources and protect our food supply. Our priorities are to improve communication and awareness of agriculture, ensure food safety and consumer protection, and to build partnerships and advocates. UDAF endeavors to utilize the FDA Produce Safety Rule (PSR), a science-based, preventive rule for the safe growing, harvesting, packing, and holding of produce, to advance our mission. We seek to participate in FDA’s formal collaboration opportunity found in PAR-16-137 (State and Territory Cooperative Agreement to Enhance Produce Safety in Preparation of Implementation of FDA's Rule: Standards for the Growing, Harvesting, Packing, & Holding of Produce for Human Consumption), a cooperative agreement that will assist UDAF with the implementation of the PSR. The broad, long-term objectives of UDAF, via the program, are to establish a multi-faceted food safety program to encourage the safe production of fresh produce and to promote compliance with the requirements of the Produce Safety Rule. The specific aims of UDAF are to update Utah Code to expand our jurisdiction to include farms; establish and maintain a produce farm inventory by requiring farms to register with UDAF; develop a produce landscape that assists with risk categorization of farms; provide resources for the produce safety program’s infrastructure including staffing and IT development; collaborate with the FDA to develop a multi-year plan to implement a new produce safety system and define performance measures; develop and provide education, outreach and technical assistance in multiple formats, prioritizing covered farms; develop and provide education, outreach and technical assistance to regulators; collaborate with the FDA to design and implement a compliance program with sharable data; and develop program measurements to objectively measure progress utilizing both quantitative and qualitative data. The outcomes of the integration of the Produce Safety Rule are an educated regulatory and farming community as well as a robust inspection-based compliance program. These outcomes benefit Utah by ensuring food safety, promoting the healthy growth of Utah agriculture, and building partnerships and advocates.