Sacramento, CA – Now beginning its fourth season of conducting mandatory government audits of leafy greens farms, the California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement (LGMA) has initiated a new training program designed to help members reduce citations found through the program’s rigorous food safety inspections. A series of Food Safety Workshops was conducted this past week for harvest foreman and food safety supervisors of LGMA handler-members. The seminars were designed to provide assistance for LGMA members so that they can more easily achieve compliance with the LGMA’s food safety practices.
“LGMA members must achieve 100 percent compliance with the accepted food safety practices,” explained LGMA CEO Scott Horsfall. “Any member issued a citation is required to correct the problem and to submit to re-inspection to prove compliance has been achieved.” Horsfall further explained that the LGMA is using the new workshop training as a means of making members better able to achieve compliance and to reduce the number of citations from audits conducted by government inspectors
“The LGMA has conducted nearly 2,000 audits to date and we now have a tremendous amount of experience in what it takes to achieve compliance,” said Horsfall. “In addition, we have added personnel with technical expertise to provide the kind of assistance our members need to reduce citations; which is the goal of the workshop series and of our new technical assistance program.”
LGMA’s technical assistance program is being overseen by Mike Villaneva, LGMA’s Technical director, who has 26 years experience in the public and private agriculture sectors. According to Villaneva, the LGMA Food Safety Workshops are designed as a way for members and auditors to share information about what works and what does not work when it comes to ensuring compliance with food safety practices.
“One of the main areas where we see problems is in training harvest personnel,” said Villaneva. “This is why we targeted harvest supervisors to attend the workshop and it is also why the information from these workshops is available in both English and Spanish. We are very focused in helping our members better train their workers to follow food safety practices and standard operating procedures the companies have in place and which must be enforced.”
Villaneva noted there was a very high level of interest in the workshop series with over 160 attendees participating in seven workshops. Three sessions were held in Salinas, two in Santa Maria one in Oxnard. Villaneva noted that the California Department of Agriculture’s, USDA-certified inspectors who perform the LGMA audits were in attendance at all sessions and that the LGMA Compliance Officer Jon Field was also on hand to provide input on what they are seeing in the field which could help reduce citations.
Source: LGMA