Download FarmerRancherMay07.indd - San Luis Obispo County Farm Bureau

8 • May 2007 • Farmer & Rancher
Leafy Green Agreement
Adopted to Assist Producers
and Consumers by Steven Knudsen
G
reen leafy vegetable
growers and handlers
across California want
to earn their customers back, and
after seven months of coalition
building and policy development
they are positioned to do just that.
The green leafy vegetable
industry, along with support from
Western Growers, Farm Bureau
(FB), Produce Marketing Association and California Department
of Food and Agriculture (CDFA),
has developed a food-safety
matrix for production and harvest
of lettuce and leafy greens. The
agreement has come in response
to consumer, retail, regulator and
agricultural industry pressure
stemming from the E. coli 0157H:7
outbreak last fall, which sadly
resulted in 205 confirmed illnesses
and three deaths in 26 states.
The outbreak, which ultimately
devastated the spinach industry
in California, contributed to farm
gate losses in San Luis Obispo
County greater than $1.5 million,
a 56 percent drop from 2005.
Statewide, spinach growers
lost close to $100 million dollars
after regulators warned consumers to stop eating bagged spinach.
To regain consumer confidence, green leafy
handlers across the
state have signed
on as signatories
to comply with the
industry’s Good
Agriculture Practices
(GAP) defined within
the matrix; they
include best practices
for irrigation water,
soil amendments,
nonsynthethic crop
treatments, machine
harvest, hand harvest,
equipment-facilitated
cross contamination,
flooding, post-harvest
water application,
production locations
and employee hygiene. These GAPs
were developed by
a coalition of leafy
greens industry
members
and were
reviewed and
endorsed by
food science
experts in
academia and
government.
As of
April 1, a total
of 71 handlers
have become signatories to the
agreement. Locally, many Central
Coast handlers are signed on in
support of the agreement: Agro
Jal Farms Inc., Santa Maria; Babe
Farms Inc., Santa Maria; Beachside Produce LLC, Guadalupe;
Bonita Packing Company, Santa
Maria; Fresh Kist, Nipomo; Pismo–Oceano Vegetable Exchange,
Oceano; Sun Coast Farms, Santa
Maria; and Talley Farms Inc., Arroyo Grande.
On March 23, the newly
formed Leafy Greens Marketing
Agreement Board of Directors,
which represents more than 99
percent of the leafy greens produced in California, accepted
the matrix to be used in the
marketing agreement’s verification program with a unanimous
vote. Executive Board Member
Ryan Talley had this to say about
the agreement. “In a very short
period of time, the industry has
united and with the help of many
individuals has worked tirelessly
developing safety standards to
make an extremely safe industry
even safer.”
Farmer & Rancher • May 2007 • 9
New regulation doesn’t
come cheap,
and signatories of the
agreement
are prepared
to pay two
cents per
carton for the
new program, which
will be administered by
CDFA. The
assessment
will generate
approximately $4.6 million, with $3 million earmarked
for auditing alone. Experts have
told the board that the cost of
implementing the program could
run the board upward to $5 million in the first year. Ultimately,
the budget will fund 12 to 15
fulltime inspectors to first inspect
each farm for compliance and
then enforce the GAPs outlined
in the food-safety matrix.
FB’s Rayne Thompson, Director–International Trade and Plant
Health, said that development of
the marketing agreement and matrix wasn’t easy. “Fast, thorough
and tough decisions had to be
made. It was important to get it
done or someone else would have
done it for us.”
Inspections are scheduled to
begin this spring. In the interim,
trial inspections of signatories
will take place with the expectation that each signatory is compliant with the program’s guidelines
for good agricultural practices.
The practices affect leafy green
production of iceberg lettuce, romaine lettuce, green leaf lettuce,
red leaf lettuce, butter lettuce,
baby leaf lettuce (i.e., immature
lettuce or leafy greens), escarole,
endive, spring mix, spinach, cabbage, kale, arugula and chard.
In the meantime, Senator
Dean Flores is developing three
controversial food-safety bills. SB
200 requires coordination of foodsafety inspections between the
Department of Public Health and
CDFA; SB 201 requires specific
leafy green growing
practices; and SB 202
requires a trace-back
system and a biannual mock recall.
All three bills have
worked their way
through the senate review process,
passing on party line
votes. Senate agriculture supporters,
however, had some
success in amending
the bills. SB 201 was
ammended to allow
growers to apply for
a variance if they
wanted to follow
different practices
than those outlined
in the bill and deleted the reference to
a marketing order.
LEAFY GREENS
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Arugula
Cabbage
Chard
Endive
Escarole
Kale
Lettuces – baby leaf,
butter, green & red leaf,
iceberg, romaine
• Spinach
• Spring mix
“Everyone’s goal is to provide
consumers with a safe product,”
says Thompson. “It is important
to remember that the leafy green
industry already provides some
of the safest and highest-quality
greens in the world. With this
in mind, it is our hope that this
effort will regain customer confidence and revive the industry.”
Photos
Left – Romaine lettuce is carefully harvested, leaving any leaves
that touched the soil in the field.
Center – 2006 lettuce production in SLO County accounted for
more than $41.5 million or 21 percent of total vegetable production.
Right – Green leafy vegetables
are carefully inspected for quality.
Photos by Steven Knudsen.