 Thank you, thank you everyone for having me here today. I will be talking a little bit about basics of cleaning and sanitizing. This is webinar for fresh produce growers. I'll be brief, because I could talk here for over a week about cleaning and sanitizing programs for farm, for a packing house. So let's start with why it is important because cross contamination is a serious concern for produce growers because oftentimes, what are initially small amounts of contamination can spread to equipment, water, and produce and then can result in a widespread contamination events and outbreaks of foodborne disease. So growers can reduce their risks both in the field and after harvesting by limiting the opportunity for pathogens spread via cross contamination. And by doing that, growers following good agriculture practices can increasingly improve their produce quality and safety and protect their own businesses. So producers can use the standards cleaning and sanitizing practices to reduce source of microbial contamination through cross contamination on their produce. So cleaning and sanitizing programs, you have to think about when you were in a packing house or even in your field, we have those, what we call four zones of contact, four zones. So the zone one is the food contact surfaces. So this is where the produce contact directly. It is more the more critical one. So we can say there are harvest beans, there are roller brushes, containers, worker's hands and harvesting tools and everything that directly contact produce. So, and then cleaning and sanitizing is extremely important on this zone one. Zone two and three are adjacent to food contact surfaces. They are also important to pay attention. But in zone four, it's outside the packing house, let's say, but it's also important to maintain and cleaning and sanitizing program through all these four zones. So you limiting or reducing cross contamination and contamination of produce. So basically cleaning and sanitizing program are followed by four to five steps. Basically it's four steps. So first of all, we are going for physical removal of residues. When we are washing produce, whether it cares a lot of soil or a lot of residues, they can be cleaned out with a brush, removed manually with a brush, or you can just do a water rinse to remove the excess. And again, this water needs to be portable, safe to drink. It needs to be following the safe standards. And after that, then you will find the cleaning solution, what we call detergents. Then it's appropriated cleaning agents that will clean the soils or residues that you have in there. And you're gonna brush it or you're gonna use any tools to remove the excess using the detergents. You can use a acid rinse if you have a lot of mineral buildup, especially if you have heavy water on your facility. But mostly after this applying detergent, you do a final rinse with clean water that could be warm or cold water to remove all the excess of cleaner. And then you will apply the sanitizer. Sanitizers can be most soft sanitizers you don't need to rinse it out. You just apply the sanitize and let it dry. And then cleaning and sanitizing programs. I always like to say that it's unique to your facility, your practices and the commodities that you're washing. For example, root vegetables often require initial rinse scrubbing followed by one or two additional rinses to remove the soil residues. While fruits and vegetables that grow all above the ground might be brushed and wiped with other any kind of residue. So we can see the difference here based on your commodity and based on your practices. Some other commodities that are more delicate and more perishable products like strawberries, blueberries, the growers don't normally wash them with water. So all the processing, the sorting and the packing is in a dry facility, which is every time you're adding water to your processing, you're adding another point of contamination. Even though you're adding sanitizer to the water, even though it is still adding another source of contamination. But again, some produce cannot be dry washed or dry processed. They need to be washed with water, but then some other they don't need. So in this case, when you're washing small, when you're processing small fruits, you don't need to use, it is a dry facility. So you don't use water. So when you're cleaning and sanitizing your equipment, it is, it tends to be all dry cleaning. Unless you have equipment that it can be disassembled and then it can move to other areas that it can wash and clean and dry that is fine, but in the physical, the cleaning place, equipments, they're normally washed dry. So you don't add more contamination, more opportunities to grow bacteria on those areas. And you're choosing cleaning and sanitizers. Let's talk about cleaning. The cleaners normally for produce washing, you're gonna use alkaline detergents that are more likely to wash carbohydrates, which is the source that we are bringing from the field and then fruits and vegetables. And for any routine environmental cleaning, we are talking about equipment, we are talking about floors, we are talking about tools and we're talking about beans. Keep in mind that you're always using low water pressure because let's say if you're washing your floor and you have high pressure, it can splash to your everywhere and even to your packing line equipment and it can also contaminate if you have something in the floor, which is normally the dirtier players. When you're choosing the sanitizer, keep in mind that it needs to be EPA registered sanitizers. The most used ones are chlorine and peroxacetic acid based sanitizers and they need to be approved for food contact surfaces or produce washing when you are adding to the wash water. And be careful when you're using lubricants to you, the lubricants also need to be food grade so you don't have the chemical hazard introduced to your produce. So again, when you're talking about sanitizers, we are looking for the EPA registration number. So when you're looking at the label of your sanitizer, you look for this EPA registration number that is on the label of your sanitizer, but most of those sanitizers, they don't come with this nice looking for food and vegetable washing. They normally come this way. So they come with the EPA registration number and that's all. And you have to go to the EPA website and look for this number and look for the whole label, all the whole description of the product and see if it is intended for washing fruits and vegetables or food contact surfaces. There are some that are very similar that are not intended for washing fruit and vegetables such as florax that has a scented added to it. And then if you look at the label, it doesn't even have an EPA registration number. But again, some of those, they might have it but they might not intended for washing fruit and vegetables. So every time you have to go to the EPA registration number, the website, look for pesticide product and label system and you're gonna type this number in and you're just gonna open up a series of files. You're gonna click on the list updated one. You're gonna open up a PDF file with more than five pages. You're just gonna search for fruit and vegetable washing or food contact surfaces. And then it will tell you how to prepare and what concentration you should be using as well. So every time you're getting a new sanitizer, look at the label and look at the registration number and how to prepare and how to use it. And also in the current vegetable, a Southeast vegetable handbook, we have a list of sanitizers that can be used in wash water, dump tank or vegetable wash water. They're specified by the use, whether it's for using the wash dump tank or equipment, some concentration range, some use. But again, this is just to give you an idea and an overview of what sanitizers can be used. But again, every time you get a new one, go to the website and look at the label and read the label for the product. Some suppliers can provide a manual that you can read it through and then it has the specifications for it. But oftentimes you'll have to go online and look for the fact sheet and then the description of it. So and then important things to keep in mind about cleaning and sanitizing programs on your facilities is that you need to set up a cleaning and sanitizing schedule that can be determined by based on your volume of product, time interval or between individual lots of products. So it is your cleaning schedule. So you have to set it up so it has to be effective. It needs to make sense to the practices that are part of a normal operation. So if you decided it's gonna be doing every lot, every end of lot that you're cleaning or basic cleaning on your line that you set it up or if you're gonna do at the end of the day or and then you are doing four cleaning every five, four days then it's on your schedule. So you need to follow that. And you also have to have easy to clean equipment on your facility. So if you can see this picture here, it shows a table that is definitely not easy to clean and any pathogen as microorganisms can hide with these crevices. So you have to be careful when you, with the type of equipment that you have. Sometimes retrofitting might not work, you need to get a new equipment. It doesn't mean that you have an old equipment, it cannot be cleaned or sanitized. So just keep that in mind. Segregate cleaning tools, you can use color-coded tools. It's very useful. So tools that equipment that you use to clean the bathrooms and you put in one color or you segregate them or brushes that you use on a packing line or a food contact surface that are different than you use to clean the floor or other adjacent areas. Keep pests and animals away from your processing area. So they all oftentimes bring pathogens. So you just wanna make sure that you have a pest control system and for everything you're doing on your packing house or in a processing or harvesting, you need to have detailed standard operating procedures and document everything you're doing based on your cleaning and on your practices. And lastly, workers' training is extremely important. They need to understand why cleaning and sanitizing is important and how to properly perform those practices. So that's why this is one of the most important concepts and key points, workers' training. They need to know what to do and properly how to do it. So to wrap up, I'm just gonna promote one of our programs that it's recently launched. It's called the AgWater Safety Program. It is a program that will provide educational support to growers and navigate through the new requirements related to the AgWater proposed rule for the produce safety rule. And you're also offering microbial water testing for you for free. So if you're interested in participating, you can access this link here and fill it up a pre-screening survey or you can use the key art code here and open the survey link. Or if you have any questions, you can reach out to me and I'll be happy to give you more information about this program. And questions, I'm open to question and thank you all for being here today.