GGNA Summer 2019 Newsletter

Spotlight Community Newsletter

Summer Newsletter 07/2019

Table of Contents

GLOBALG.A.P.'s Food Safety Certification Solutions in North America
Welcome New GLOBALG.A.P. Members in North America!
Your Input Needed for Certifying Hemp Production
Newly Published Resources

GLOBALG.A.P Photo Campaign

United Fresh Recap

GLOBALG.A.P. Hop Info Day Recap
Revised Food Safety Programs & Auditing Protocol for the Fresh Tomato Supply Chain (Tomato Metrics) Published
Upcoming Events and Public Workshops

GLOBALG.A.P.'s Food Safety Certification Solutions in North America

This week GLOBALG.A.P. launched the Produce Safety Assurance Standard. This food safety solution is a subset of the GLOBALG.A.P. Integrated Farm Assurance (IFA) Standard and consists of food safety and traceability control points. The Produce Safety Assurance Standard is an updated and renamed version of the GLOBALG.A.P. Produce Safety Standard (PSS).

Although this solution is available globally, GLOBALG.A.P. North America is actively promoting the GLOBALG.A.P. Harmonized Produce Safety Standard (HPSS) as the preferred food safety solution in our market. HPSS is the Harmonized Standard developed and maintained by United Fresh Produce Association and operated by GLOBALG.A.P. It is designed by and for the North American market, and aligned with FSMA.

Welcome New GLOBALG.A.P. Members in North America!

Subway® restaurants are owned by more than 21,000 franchisees—small business owners who operate their neighborhood Subway® restaurants in more than 100 countries around the world. Subway is dedicated to producing the highest-quality, safest, and best-tasting sandwiches and meals in every part of the world.

Train to Comply aims to be the e-training tool of choice for the food supply chain, when it comes to compliance training. It recently launched its new product, GLOBALG.A.P. in a Box, and promotes it as a simple, inexpensive, easy to use membership program that has everything a farmer needs to create and implement a GLOBALG.A.P. program.

GLOBALG.A.P. is the product of a network of partnerships that extends across the globe. Our members play a major role in helping us connect producers and suppliers, improve GLOBALG.A.P. Certification, create a benchmarking framework and promote food safety, sustainability, worker safety, animal welfare and environmental protection. To learn more about membership, download the GGNA membership brochure and contact Roberta Anderson at anderson@globalgap.org.

Your Input Needed on Certifying Hemp Production

GLOBALG.A.P. currently allows certification of low-THC hemp under the Integrated Farm Assurance standard. Restrictions apply to hemp grown for medicinal and recreation use. We are receiving an increasing number of inquiries about expanding our scope to allow certification of legally grown hemp regardless of THC content and/or end use. GLOBALG.A.P. seeks the input of our stakeholders on the market need for this scope expansion, and the associated risks. We invite you to complete our survey by August 1. To get started, please click here. We welcome you to send any additional input to publiccomments@globalgap.org.

Newly Published Resources

IFA v 5.2 National Interpretation Guideline (All Farm + Crops + Fruit and Vegetable)
A National Interpretation Guideline is a document that provides guidance on how to implement GLOBALG.A.P. Control Points and Compliance Criteria at a national level. Developed by a National Technical Working Group, this guideline goes through a transparent approval procedure and, once approved, becomes a normative GLOBALG.A.P. document.

Annual Report Annual Report 2018
In 2018, we welcomed the 200,000th grower under GLOBALG.A.P. certification. This milestone was achieved over 21 years of consistent and organic growth, making GLOBALG.A.P. one of the world’s largest farm assurance networks for Good Agricultural Practices, covering more than 120 countries.

Integrity Report 2018
Learn how the GLOBALG.A.P. Integrity Program is ensuring consistent delivery and implementation of the GLOBALG.A.P. standard by 2,000+ trained inspectors and auditors working for 155+ approved certification bodies certifying 600+ products and 200,000+ producers, spread across 130+ countries in 5 continents.

GLOBALG.A.P. Photo Campaign – GLOBALG.A.P. Around the World

This is a great way to shine the spotlight on your company. Send us a picture or a short video with your GLOBALG.A.P. Number (GGN) and the GLOBALG.A.P. logo. You will be included in our social media campaign, and be presented on our website and our monthly newsletter. The most striking contributions will be part of our calendar.

United Fresh Expo 2019 Recap

United Fresh GGNA GLOBALG.A.P. North America hosted its first business suite and the Food Safety Community Reception at the United Fresh 2019 Convention and Expo. Thank you to GGNA member, United Fresh Produce Association, for this opportunity! Our team had the pleasure of meeting face to face with many of our stakeholders as we advance GLOBALG.A.P. solutions for the industry, including the Integrated Farm Assurance, Harmonized Produce Safety and Produce Handling Assurance standards. The United Fresh event had a fresh look and format, and confirmed more than 5,000 attendees across the fresh produce industry. We’ll see you next year when the event moves to San Diego!

GLOBALG.A.P Hop Info Day Recap

Thank you to our member Hop Growers of America for hosting this Info day on June 25 in Sunnyside, WA. Raina Spence, our Director of Producer Solutions, led two sessions. The first session was an introduction to the GLOBALG.A.P. experience, designed for growers considering certification. She led a discussion on what is happening in the food safety arena, including the structure of rules and regulations, and why we are seeing increased concerns. The second session focused on the GLOBALG.A.P. Hop subscope, allowing for plenty of Q&A. Raina also presented on the SAI Platform Farm Sustainability Assessment Add-on, and Salmon Safe shared its overlay option for streamlined dual certification for growers demonstrating water quality and habitat conservation practices.

Photo by Ann George

Are you interested in hosting a GLOBALG.A.P. Info Day? Please contact Roberta Anderson.

Revised Food Safety Programs & Auditing Protocol for the Fresh Tomato Supply Chain (Tomato Metrics) Published

United Fresh Produce Association and the United Fresh Tomato Metrics workgroup released updated Tomato Guidelines in Fall 2018, and recently released the corresponding Food Safety Programs & Auditing Protocol for the Fresh Tomato Supply Chain (Tomato Metrics). The final versions are now available on the Quicklinks section of the HPSS and PHA pages of our website or directly available from United Fresh GAP Harmonization Initiative website under the “Download the Tomato Metrics” tab. Tomato operations may use Harmonized Produce Safety Standard (HPSS), Integrated Farm Assurance (IFA), Produce Safety Assurance (PSA) or the Produce Handling Assurance Standard (PHA) as the base food safety protocol, with the Tomato Metrics included as an addendum.