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Helping Farmers Navigate the Risks and Rewards of Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Compliance

Winifred McGee and Lynn Kime

Summary

Although FSMA’s goal of reducing food-borne illness was launched in 2012, most local food producers and value-added processors did not experience the Act’s substantial changes until very recently. Because the Pandemic curtailed many inspections that would have confirmed compliance, FSMA adoption by small value-added operations was limited until 2022. In the meantime, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration advanced to “The New Era of Smarter Food Safety,” in which technology and other tools are used to create a safer and more digital, traceable food system. Because the “New Era’ assumes that food producers have already adopted FSMA’s Produce Safety, Preventive Controls for Human Food, and Preventive Controls for Animal Food rules, the farmers who have yet to consider FSMA’s impact are significantly behind the power curve, and they are potentially incurring additional legal and financial risk by continuing “business as usual.” They need to develop a personal awareness about how FSMA affects their production/processing and be able to adopt the necessary practices and protocols before tackling the “New Era” technology. They also need to select the appropriate coverage – whether agriculturally focused traditional crop insurance, NAP, WFRP or Micro Farm, or business focused product liability and recall insurance – to ensure that those risks beyond their control are addressed. The University of Scranton SBDC received a Northeast Extension Risk Management Education grant in April 2024 to empower producers to explore what products they will offer for sale and to build individual plans for FSMA (and eventually New Era) adoption. In the first year of this 18-month project, the Scranton SBDC team has taken specific actions to empower farmers to address market, legal, and financial risk as they add value in today’s food safety conscious marketplace. Team members co-consulted across the state with regionally based SBDC personnel, helping their clients develop custom action steps for their enterprises. The team also developed a set of tip sheets and a risk management workbook to be distributed by consultants and at winter production meetings. These tools enable farmers to operate legal, market-ready, and profitable enterprises by developing their own written plan; when strategies and actions are selected and adopted by the producer, there is greater practice change. This poster highlights the strategies and tools that have been developed and beta tested in Pennsylvania, introduces tip sheets and the workbook (all available online), and shares “success stories” that illustrate the initial impact of this project. Viewers of this poster will learn how to access tools and strategies to duplicate this educational process in their communities.

Details

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