 Well, good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to our Wednesday weekly webinar. After today's speakers, there are going to be Dr. David Sikowski and Chandra Ziemann-Bolinski. And we'll give you a little more information about them here in a second. But first off, a little reminder, we have one more webinar after today, Dr. Clifford Hall. And the person who's gone today, Dr. Julie Karen Robinson, will be presenting the final one. Don't forget, these are also being recorded and they'll then upload it to YouTube, and those will be posted on the Field of Work website if you ever want to go back and listen to them or you know of somebody else who missed it who want to watch. And also, don't forget, for questions, just type them down in the left-hand corner there, number five here on this screen. And the speakers will be able to watch them down the chat area and answer those questions a little later. One more thing to go over before we get started is the sure-it survey that Julie always wants to remind you about. You should be getting that sent you an email, but it's pretty important to fill those out because this is a grant project and those responses are very important to kind of finish up the information, you know, for research for the grant. And she's also going to be picking people at random to win prizes for those that actually have completed the survey, so another bonus to do that. So today's topic is food safety inspections and audit requirements. And as I mentioned, our speakers today are going to be David Czakowski and Chandra Ziemann-Bolinski. David Czakowski is an associate professor in the Department of Agribusiness and Applied Economics. His teacher responsibilities include courses in agricultural law, farm and agribusiness management, and food law. Chandra Ziemann-Bolinski serves Burleigh County as the family and consumer sciences agent within the Indian Extension Service. After graduating from the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities, she became a food science technician with the research and development team at General Mills developing new and innovative frozen food products. Chandra chose to return to North Dakota to be near her family upon redeploying from Iraq in 2009. She furthered her food science and food safety background with Cloverdale Foods Company, where she transitioned into the director of technical services position leading the food safety and quality control effort. There she was the technical team lead during audits from FDA, USDA, SQF, local food audits according to the food code, and several other informal inspections. And now I'll pass it along to today's two speakers. Go ahead, guys. All right. Well, I'll take it from here. Thank you, Scott. Nice introduction. And I just really appreciate all that you did to get us up here technologically. As he mentioned, we'll be co-presenting with David, and we're happy to bring you today's topic, which is being ready for food safety inspections and audits. And we are going to elaborate today on really two different categories of these types of inspections and audits. The government does have their say in how we produce food as we would provide it for others, not necessarily in your own kitchen. This is more of a commercial standpoint. You're making, whether it's at the farmer's market, making jelly or even producing apples to sell to somebody. And the other aspect of inspection could be driven from private sector. That could even be something related to, you know, you as a consumer might drive a certain standard that you'll be looking for in the food that you would purchase for consumption. Okay, so moving on past the two subjects here, unless David has anything to chime in, we will move on to his notes here and background thoughts. Okay, David, are you with us? I'm with you. I had muted my button. Sorry, apologize. All right. The food industry is more complicated than we may realize. The food laws in the United States extend back to roughly a heart in 10 years, maybe even beyond that. But over time, as issues have arisen in our food industry, our laws have been expanded. And I think it's an accident, but when you look at the laws that we have for our food industry, I categorize them into five sectors. There's the laws that apply to your input suppliers, people that are providing medicines for livestock, for example, a second sector is the agriculture producer, the people with the orchard of trees, the grain growers, the livestock producers. The third sector would then be the food processing, where we take those ag commodities, process them into food products. Number four, it becomes the retail and the food service. It's our grocery stores, as well as our restaurants, our cafeterias at our institutions. And then number five, of course, is what we're all striving to serve, and those are the consumers. And you look at the U.S. laws and they really do seem to fit into these five categories. Again, I don't think anybody intended to be that way. It just seems to be the way it has evolved over the past century. Today, we're going to primarily focus on what are some of the rules for those of us who are agricultural producers, for those of us who are food processors, for those of us who are involved in food retail sales. And many of the businesses in the food industry fit into one of those categories. I'm a farmer, so I'm in the category of agricultural producer, or I'm a food manufacturer, I'm a food processor, or I operate a grocery store. I'm in the retail sector. But we also have businesses, and perhaps this is the type of business that many of us are thinking about this afternoon. And that's a business that fits into several of these sectors. I might be raising the fruit on my tract of land. I process that fruit into a, well, let's keep it simple, into a jam. And then I sell that jam or that jelly at the retail sector. So I find myself with my simple business in all three of these key sectors rather than just one of these sectors. So today we're going to find ourselves trying to understand each of these sectors at least a little bit. But I want you to have these three in mind as we go forward today. We also have government requirements, whether it's federal government requirements, state government requirements, local government requirements. Obviously, government requirements, if we're subject to these rules, we must meet them. We have no choice. There is also in the private sector where businesses within the food industry are documenting their expectations, they're formalizing their expectations for the other food business. If I'm going to buy your food product and use it in my food business and whatever it is that I'm manufacturing for the consumer, I expect you to meet certain standards and to have some uniformity among these standards, try to make it a little simpler for the industry. The industry is developing, collaboratively developing standards that we're going to refer to today as private sector standards or perhaps as food industry standards. So as an operator of even a small firm, I may find myself thinking about the several different sectors of the food industry in which I'm operating. I may find myself having to think about the government regulations as well as the private sector standards. As we look at those in this hour, we're going to find that there's some similarities among the government regulations and the industry standards. We're also going to see that there's some differences. Just a little graph then that I use to try to organize my own thinking. We have the three sectors. We have the different levels of expectations. The federal government, for example, USDA and the FDA are two of the agencies that have lead responsibility for the food industry. What does the federal government expect of our agricultural producers? It's often referred to as good agricultural practices or GAP. And here we're going to see that in the past several years, especially in the most recent year, there are regulations now that the FDA needs to enforce for those farm operations that are producing fruits and vegetables, for example, for the fresh market. What are those good agricultural practices that I have to use in my farming operation? Likewise, USDA and FDA have regulations for the food processors. Often those are referred to as good manufacturing practices or sometimes they're referred to as SSOPs, standard sanitary operating practices or procedures. And then, of course, there's the one that many of us have heard about, the HACCP, the hazard analysis and the preventive controls. There really isn't that much federal regulation of retail and food service. We're going to find instead that the retail and food service is primarily at the state level. So you move down one of the rows in this graphic. We, for example, have the North Dakota Department of Health, which has authority and responsibility for food processing within the state. So this is in collaboration with the federal agencies, but it also has then the responsibility for the retail and food service sectors. The municipalities, the counties likewise have responsibilities and they are combined in with what I call the state and local government regulations. Then finally, we get again to that private sector where the private industry is setting forth standards and we want to make sure that those standards are being met, those private standards are being met with an audit and certification process. So just a graphic to try to illustrate the variety of topics that we're going to be touching on this afternoon. Yes, and just to add to what David's saying, we are going to elaborate a little bit on the private sector and what that means to you. But without getting too overwhelmed on, whoa, what is all this and what do I need to follow, we're going to lay it out for you. So if you think about right now in your mind, what type of product you produce, we will get to it. So in this case, let's say that you produce apples for a farmer's market. You're likely going to fall under the gap agricultural producers sector. And if you are processing anything, we like to use that example of maybe jelly or I saw canned goods last year. You're under the food processing sector. A couple of examples. Okay, we'll skip to the next slide. Okay. And so again, we're going to elaborate a little bit about the private sector and I'm going to read the quote here that we have. The private sector standards often take the form of contract. And basically what these contracts are saying is, I'm not going to purchase your product unless you can document that your product is safe and meets specific standards. And sometimes these buyers, and I'm thinking of a couple examples, Sam's Club, Costco, they have different standards than maybe Walmart might. But nearly every retailer has some type of standard. And that's what we mean by private sector standards that they require before they're going to buy your product before you as a consumer can even buy. So we're saying to ourselves, well, whose standards do we need to follow? Is it the government? Is it private sector? Well, let's see here. Let's get into it. So we have a couple enforcers. We're going to break it down between. And really our answer to that question that I left you rhetorically here just a second ago was, you may want to consider both standards. And sometimes you have to. What we have to follow is the government. And of course the government enforces its regulations. We're going to give you a few examples later on. They do this through inspection. And so I have a couple of graphics up here. USDA, and I heard this quote from the Grocer Manufacturers Association about five years ago. The GMA indicates that about 85% of what you are consuming is FDA inspected from a federal standpoint now. And about 15% might be USDA. So USDA inspects anything organic? Most all neat products that are sold across the state border. There's a couple exceptions there. And eggs within the shell. You'll see that there's an example of a mark of inspection here that the USDA inspector that you can see the plant number 38, they leave their mark behind. And you know that inspectors were there the entire time that they were producing. So the government is one enforcer. And the other enforcer is above and beyond the government. And these are the companies that say, hey, we have a certain set of standards that we're going to require. Sometimes above and beyond federal or state or even your farmer's market inspections. And that leader is GFSI, Global Food Safety Initiative. And these are leaders across industry and academia, government organizations. They get together and they make sure that there is a benchmark. Meaning that they're kind of harmonizing an approach to managing food safety across the industry. Okay. So we really have both standards here and we're going to break down the differences in a little bit. Okay. So David, government inspections. Okay. So I'll take this here in the beginning, but we have meat and poultry processing, which is, and I mentioned it earlier, we saw an example of the mark of inspection. When you're producing meat, and some of you might be on the call that, you know, you bring grass-fed beef or something too. I know here in Bismarck we have a great producer who brings grass-fed beef and many other different types of red meat to our local farmer's market. And they're very popular. Well, they are typically locally inspected. But if they were to transport across state lines, they may need to be USDA inspected. And they actually might be. I shouldn't quote exactly. USDA is a continuous inspection. So if you're creating cuts of meat or slaughtering from the hours of 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., you're going to have an inspector there the entire time so they can mark that inspection. We also have food processing, which is, again, regular inspections by FDA and states. This could also be locally through your county, depending on what your setup is. And this actually is the majority. And FDA doesn't necessarily have a set particular time. They're not here 24-7 like USDA would be in your facility, I should say. They are really typically an annual basis. But you never know when they're going to come. So you always have to be operating up to standard. And then you have your retail and food services sectors where there are regular inspections by state and local. And typically, here's the neat thing. The results are usually posted online. And so when I go into sixth grade sex classes or even ninth grade high school, I pop these so that they can see what's going on. And they feel kind of empowered. Okay. Skipping on here. David, are you back? Well, I'll tell you what. I'll take this and continue on going. So the examples that we're just giving you a highlight here on this slide. This is kind of a boring slide. But honestly, we're going to tell you that we have some examples of government regulations. And then what we're going to do is we're going to pair up the government regulations to the differences in private sector. Why are we giving you these examples? We want you to be empowered through your small business. And we're really targeting here anybody that's producing, especially for your local markets, your farmer's markets, to come up with a food safety plan. Because at some point, this is going to apply to you. Whether your market has local inspectors now or not, they likely will in the future. We want you to maintain a certain level of safety. We're going to discuss the similarities and differences as we get on to the next few slides here. Okay. So David here has a slide. Okay. So David is just commenting in the bottom that we cannot. I don't believe that we can hear him. So I'm going to take the half of the food processing regulation here that he's got. Now whenever you see a regulation from a federal standpoint, you're going to see typically it's title 21. Now this is 21, which usually relates to FDA. And then you have the Code of Regulation. So it's kind of like a chapter 117. David was telling me earlier that this 117 is new within a year relative to the Food Safety Modernization Act, fees law. And so we have a written risk control plan. This is a food safety plan with many different elements. And you know, HACCP is actually now required across all federal plants. It wasn't for a very long time. But what has the beauty of HACCP, even though it seems somewhat mundane, okay, we've got to do all this paperwork. We have to make sure that we're demonstrating that we're producing safely. You not only need to produce safely, but you have to demonstrate it on paper. Well, this is preventing the onset of foodborne illness. That's the big thing here. And this is especially important when you're producing for consumers, not just somebody at home and your own dinner table. So we have, you have, you're required to enhance it, identify the risks. It could be that you use a, let's say you're making ground beef or let's say that you use, you know, there's a lot of metal. And one of your conveyor belts says you wash your fresh produce from your farmer's market. There might be a risk of metal within your product. So you are at a point in which you have to make sure that you're mitigating that risk. That would be an example. So there's a few different types of risks. We have physical, we have chemical, and then we have biological, which would be your microorganisms. Again, the gist that you need to know is that HACCP is required by the government. And if you don't have a requirement now and you're producing food to sell, you may very well soon have this requirement. And it looks like David might be back up and running here soon. Hey, wonderful to have you. We just get most of slide number 17, David. Welcome back. Can you hear me this time? Yeah, we sure can. I'm embarrassed that it didn't work out. I apologize and thank you for continuing with the comments. We just briefed over a little bit about HACCP and the necessity and we're back on this slide. What? Number 16 or number 17? 17. 17. So do we need to go forward one more? I think we're okay. I think we explained HACCP unless you need to collaborate. No, I don't think I need to expand on your discussion of HACCP. We can go on to the next slide. As we indicate it, we have the processing sector that is subject to HACCP. The federal government is primarily responsible for the food processing sector. When it comes to the retail and the food service sector, most of the regulatory responsibility lies with our state and local governments. The task of developing detailed regulations for each of the 50 states, that becomes quite a challenge. You think about Minnesota having to develop such a set of standards, Montana having to develop such a set of standards, North Dakota having developed such a set of standards. So instead, over the past several decades, the states working with the Food and Drug Administration have come up with standards that are suggested, that are recommended to all of the state and local governments. So that way, if the state and local government wants to adopt these detailed regulations and they oversee the retail and food service sectors of the industry, they don't need, they as the local governments, they as the state governments, don't need to start from ground zero. They have a food code to consider. So the FDA, working with others, has a food code that is suggested to the state and local governments. And what do we have on this very busy slide? It's simply some of the topics that are included in the food code, but that shows the range of issues that we're always thinking about in the food industry. The food retail, the food service sectors. The management, the personnel are the managers of the companies that are applying into these responsibilities and making sure that the firm is meeting these expectations. Are the people who are working in this firm, even if it's only a couple of individuals, do they understand the standards that they must function by? Do they understand the practices that they must use for themselves? Chapter three then is the food. How do we handle the food? How do we make sure that this food is being stored and handled safely? How do we make sure that the food is being separated from or kept separate from non-food products? Number five, the equipment, or excuse me, chapter four, the equipment utensils, the linens that we might use at our food service restaurant. Details remind us as to what we need to do within our business to have the safe food product, whether plumbing and waste disposal, the physical facilities, the building itself. Is it clean? Is it easy to be kept clean? Do we have the proper lights? Do we have the proper ventilation? Are we keeping the rodents and others undesirables outside of the facilities? These details are addressed in the food code. Again, the food code developed by the FDA in collaboration with others offered to the state and local governments so that the state and local governments have a solid foundation on which to develop or in which to adopt regulations without having to begin with a clean slate. Instead, they have solid suggestions. Chapter number seven, the poisonous and toxic materials need to keep that separate from the food, and then chapter eight in the food code talks about the compliance and the enforcement, the inspections, and what is expected of the firms. So just a quick introduction to the food code, the topics, the range of topics that are addressed in the food code, and that these are suggestions for the state and local governments to consider. Right. And David, if I could give an example on that last slide. Now, when you're talking about the food code, here's an example of what I've encountered it from an audit standpoint. As Scott mentioned, when I was first introduced, I was the Food Safety and Technical Services Director at Cloverdale Foods, which is housed in Mandan, North Dakota over here near Bismarck. And we had an inspector that came in at least once a year, sometimes twice a year, and they would audit us to this food code at our retail store, which is called the Country Store. They originally came up with this idea, well, hey, we have some oddball packages of hot dogs that we produced, or maybe a ham or two. We don't have enough at the end of the run to put it in an entire box, but we want to make a couple bucks on this perfectly good product while they came up with this retail point. So if we were to define retail and food service for those of you who don't know exactly what we're talking about, that grocery store, that country store turned into a retail point. In addition to that, they said, hey, let's make some good sandwiches so that because they're pretty far west of town and there's not a lot of restaurant options and they wanted people to get back to their shift on time, they came up with a food service point as well. In other words, they were the last step before consumers eat the product, think deli now. They started making ham sandwiches and things of this nature, and then they turned around and became as well a food service venue. So this food code is what they were audited for. So when we're going through these standards, think about how it applies to your business. Just a brief example, a little more detail on the food code. We just chose the inspection and the correction of violations if there are any. Just chose that as a topic to expand on. Again, the food code talks about the frequency of the inspection. This is going to vary from state to state even though the food code is suggested for the entire nation. Annually, maybe at least once every two years, depends on how the state or the local government feels they are capable of conducting these inspections. The access to the facility, that certainly is expected that one would be available for the inspector to look at your business to be able to make sure that you are in compliance as the inspection is completed. The inspector provides a report to the firm as well as we've already been indicated, report to the public as to what was found if there were any violations. And sometimes they'll even show up in the newspaper. If there's an imminent health hazard, something that catches the inspector's attention, that is very serious, there's authority to begin shutting down the business until that type of a serious health hazard is corrected. So these are just some of the type of topics that are included in the food code that a person would want to have some familiarity. You're not going to study these documents necessarily in extensive detail because they are considerable amount of information in them, but you certainly want to have yourself familiar with them. And as you identify the portions of these regulations, these government standards that apply to your business, yes, you will need to study those in detail. Right. That's exactly right. So now we've elaborated a little bit on the government requirements. We talked about HASAP earlier. We kind of breezed over a little bit about FDA as well as USDA that has the HASAP inspections. We talked about the food code which primarily relates to retail and food service. Now we talked a little bit earlier about the private sector. We're going to elaborate here a little bit. Consumer and industry driven auditing, again, is above and beyond the governmental inspection. And you might ask yourself, whoa, this is getting, why, how does this apply to me? This is getting a little, you know, globally here now, this is above my level. But we want you to be aware of it because the important thing here is that consumers have a very influential drive here in the food safety sector in industry. Consumers want to know what's in their food. And that really does translate to a small kitchen oriented business as it pertains to the farmer's market. We want you to be familiar with GFSI and they're recognized, they're called schemes. Okay, so there's, these are the various different schemes. And what we mean by that is that, let me just define GFSI. Let me take a step back. I kind of introduced it earlier, but GFSI is industry driven and it provides guidance on food safety management systems along the entire supply chain. So think seed, you know, farm to table. Okay, and then on our next slide here, we'll elaborate a little bit about the different sectors of the scheme. But really what this GFSI represents, it's an organization that represents the leading food safety experts, whether they work in the retail area, manufacturing, food service companies. This also includes government as well as academia and the extension as an example. So many different organizations, they need to cross the globe and they promote a benchmark standard so that anybody that is SQS recognized or FSSC 22,000 or there's a BRC global standard picture there in front of you. Anybody that has one of these certifications is above and beyond their peers. And you know that if I'm producing a hot dog in India with SQS certification, it's going to be to the highest food safety standard that it would be here in the United States. This especially applies global gap, specializes specifically in the agricultural side of things for the growing side of things. So if you find a producer wheat or, you know, kale or, you know, think where we get during, you know, up here in North Dakota, it's cold and we can't get fresh produce year round. Well, this, if you, you know, as a consumer as well as somebody who might have a small business, this is something that pertains to you. I know that these are the recognized standards and they're as good as I can get here in the United States. If they apply to the same certification. So that's an introduction to the various different types of schemes. And they're across a few different, let's skip to the next slide now, across a few different sectors. So the bubbles in blue, they're on the right-hand side of the screen. It breaks it down into the different types of businesses that might apply to these standards. We have agricultural production. Okay, David, what's an example of a product there, do you think that would apply to our farmers market folks? I certainly would look at our fresh fruits and vegetables that those are being produced and then made available directly to the consumers. Yes, absolutely. And then also I know once in a while we'll get those beef-fed or those grass-fed beef producers or your pork producers. That could also be food processing now. When we talk processing, that's anything that alters it from its original state. That could be smoking of meat, nipping, salting, chopping, grinding. You know, the government does define processing. But this could be, you folks who are making, we have a wonderful producer of sourdough bread here at our farmers market in Bismarck. That sourdough bread, I mean, I try to stock up during the summer. So that would be a processing example. We also have the standard applies to retail and food service. And there's also a sector in there for under retail and food service for if you're just housing product, there is a standard to make sure that you're doing it right. You're keeping it temperature controlled if it applies and all kinds of things. So these are the different standards and these are broken into the categories of farming of animals, of fish, of plants, grains and pulses is a separate one. All kinds of things all the way down to production of feed. That's very important. Production of food packaging. So the people who are making the plastics make sure that the polymers don't leak into our food. These are some examples. How are these audits and certifications handled? If I want to be certified, do I need to apply to one of these schemes? And then if I am part of one of these schemes, how do the people who operate the schemes monitor my actual activities? Do you want to answer that one? Well, that's a great question. Yeah, that's a great question. And really what they do is you have at least an annual audit and what they do is they typically can go through and we'll talk about this later. Your records, your paperwork from the entire last year that they were there. Typically they'll go through the last 90 days of documentation. So an example would be we talked a little bit earlier about laundering and pest control. They would look at the last 90 days of records to make sure that any of the smocks or lab coats that we used were washed with a chemical that would verify that no microorganisms were able to live, whether it was a high enough temperature or a chemical that killed it. So when you're producing jelly in your kitchen, you want to make sure and have clean overgarments or protective gear when you're doing your processing. So it's by way of audits. I hope I answered the question. Does anyone have any questions right there? Is honey considered processed? I see we have a question. That's a good question. I'm going to start out with the answer and David could probably continue. It depends. Is the answer and I will say that some honey, you hear of the term raw honey, is typically filtered and that would not be considered a process because it would still be at same state. Honey in the past, and I don't have the numbers in front of me and I don't want to scare anybody, but have been associated with one particular microbe that lives in an anaerobic environment. So no air there. And so usually when you get honey, especially from the store, there has been through the hazard plan that we mentioned earlier, a critical step to make sure that that bug has been eradicated. And usually that's a heated step. So it heats it. Now some people believe that it gets rid of some of the natural entities that are within the honey when it's heated. Heating is a process. So the majority of what you get at your retail point is heated. People come to a farmer's market sometimes to get the raw honey, but then you need to know the risk there. There is a slight, very slight possibility you would have a microbe there. David, I don't know if you want to elaborate. Other questions, please be sure to send them off. What we want to do now for the next few moments is just to make a comparison between the FDA regulations and some of the private sector standards. And we've just chosen for the purpose of our discussion this afternoon some good agricultural practices. And remember, good agricultural practices means that we're talking about what's going on on the farm or what's going on in the vineyard or the orchard. And you look at the FDA regulations as was introduced earlier this afternoon when you see Part 112, that particular regulation is less than a year old. But here are some of the topics that the FDA regulates in terms of what's going on on our farm operation. The qualification of the personnel, the training of the personnel, their hygiene practices, the health of the personnel. We don't want an ill individual handling our food while it's being processed. Agricultural water is the water such that it's not going to add contaminants to our agricultural commodity or to our food, what type of biological items are we adding to our soils? Are we properly composting the waste materials that we might be wanting to use in our soils? How about the presence of animals and so forth? So we see a list of topics that these are some of the details that the FDA addresses with good agricultural practices. Now let's look at the private sector. We chose SQF just as an example. And SQF, they address what are the requirements for the site where we are handling this fresh fruits and vegetables on the farm? How are we handling the product? How's it being stored? Again, the personal hygiene and welfare. What are the practices of packaging? The water management, the soil management, the harvesting practices. By golly, we begin to recognize the government regulations and the private sector standards. They're addressing many of the same concerns. They're not identical, but they're certainly our commonalities. So we're going to go into a little more detail. And again, we've just chosen one FDA regulation to illustrate. Here are some of the expectations that the federal government has in the United States. If you're dealing with products that are being produced on the farm, being handled and prepared so that they can go directly to the fresh market, this is what we need to be thinking about. We need to be thinking about the equipment, the knives, the implements, the mechanical harvesters, the cooling equipment, the belts, the conveyors on which the food is passing as we are handling it and getting it ready. So here are just some of the details in this type of a regulation. Are these items up to standards in terms of making sure we minimize the risk of contaminating the food? Looking a little further into that FDA regulation. Are you using equipment and tools that are of design and built in a way that they're easily clean because we certainly don't want to have an item that we can't get clean and therefore we risk contamination as we continue to use it. Is the facility clean? Is it easy to clean the facility? Is the product being stored and maintained in a way that again minimizes the risk? We continue one step further and we look at this regulation in a little more detail. And this is just one of multiple regulations. But here again, how is the equipment built? Is it built in such a way that the seams where the pieces of metal come together are easy to clean and we're hopefully able to keep the equipment free of contaminants? Are we inspecting this equipment to make sure that it's clean? Are we maintaining the equipment so that it doesn't get damaged and therefore become a point of risk in our business? Are we using it in the proper way? Are we sanitizing it properly? The equipment, the tractors, the forklifts, the other vehicles, the containers in which the foods are being checked, are these being used in such a way that we are reasonably reducing the risk that are foreseeable within our business operation? So here is a very quick and dirty example of the federal regulation. And now let's take a look at what are some of those fundamental requirements from the private sector. Okay, right. And so then we move into, we're still using our example of SQF. And we, you know, I'm going to start pointing out the similarities. Now, SQF breaks it into modules, okay? And it doesn't matter what type of business, what type of product you're producing, everybody in SQF have to follow module two. So you know that whether it's canned good or if it's shrimp, the premises, the building and all the equipment, just like the FDA regulation indicated, needs to be basically handled in a safe manner in order to produce the delivery of safe food. So next in the code we have the supplier then needs to follow whatever module is relative, whether it's module three to 15, relative to the type of food product they're producing. So for those of you on the next slide now, in module seven, who are producing the fresh fruits and vegetables, which is the majority of our markets, farmers markets, you want to make sure that you're following these things. Okay, so your machinery, especially your conveyors, your harvesting and processing rigs are of sound construction. Then they'll break it down a little bit further. The contact surfaces of the conveyors, which is why I said especially, harvesting and processing rigs shall be designed and constructed. And you can read here in an efficient way of handling the product so that any surfaces that directly, and this goes across the board, the surfaces that directly hit the consumable portion of the food contact, or food surfaces, so we call it direct contact, is cleaned and handled in a way that will mitigate food safety risk. So, you know, the example I can give here, when I think of knives, toads, trays, I appreciate that they're actually giving some examples. The FDA example gave a couple of the same examples. So really, this is benchmarking the standard. And you might say, well, why the similarities? Okay. Well, it looks like you're not really going above and beyond with SQF, beyond what the regulation requires, because remember, this is industry driven. Well, the novelty here with the private sector audit is that you're benchmarked across the globe. Okay. So, you're able to export and import, and all of a sudden you have more opportunity to make more money. Okay. The bigger your market is. So, again, that's why we're here. There are some similarities. The novelty in our country is that our government requires things to be very similar, so you don't have to come up with two sets of standards. So, for the most part, our message is, as you're creating standards for your farmer's market and producing safe product, this is a, start looking at these examples that we've given you here. The knives, the containers that you're using. So, let me skip to the next slide and continue with, this is the last slide of examples here. The water tanks are sufficient clean at the right frequency, so maybe it's monthly. Maybe you can demonstrate that they're not dirty within the month, so a month is long enough. And you can do that by, you know, plating the microorganisms, whatever your, you know, setup is. You can show in your kitchen that there just isn't any obvious signs of grime until, you know, for two weeks. And then that's what your cleanliness frequency is. You get to set that up. One more example here. I am typically the one who goes out to our 4-H camp in Washburn to set up our kitchen. Last year was a huge year for us, as a lot of you might know with the grant at the new building. We also, and I credit the director, Rad, for ensuring and sticking to his guns on making sure that the knives and the totes and all the different plates that are used out there are commercially certified. I'm bringing this example up because it pertains to, well, you're thinking about starting a business where you make jelly for the farmer's market and jam and preserves. Well, what kind of equipment should you buy? The auditor is named Anton here in Burleigh County and the city of Bismarck. He's with the Environmental Health Department. They're located at the public health building. He is the one who, and his team, and he typically goes around and audits. And the first thing that he'll look for is certified commercially represented forks and knives and, you know, metal mixing bowls. He knows that if he sees these commercially stamped knives and forks and cutlery, that he knows you know what you're doing. And I'm not endorsing any one particular product brand, but NSF is an example of one of those commercially recognized and certified cutlery manufacturers is what I'm trying to say. So if you see NSF on your forks when you're out at the, I just ate at a steakhouse here on Sunday and I saw that NSF was stamped in their forks. So you can start looking for that. I would spend a little extra money on the commercially commercial kitchen recognized equipment if you're starting from scratch. Okay. So this is an example of, you know, how you have to have a way to clean it, but you can start out with the right stuff. Okay. I'm moving on here. David, I'll pass it to you to introduce yourself. Our discussion this afternoon has been talking about what's going on on the farm, what's going on in the processing facility, what occurs in the retail. The previous example, the several slides were a detailed example of what goes on on the farm. The next several slides, and we'll go through these quickly because of the interest of time, but now we're going to be looking at a quick comparison between government regulations and private sector standards when it comes to that food processing facility, those good manufacturing practices, the GMPs. Here we look at, again, the broad topics that the FDA addresses in its regulations, the planters, the facility, the building itself, the sanitation practices that we're using in the operation, again, the equipment, the utensils that are being used during the manufacturing process. And how are we controlling the process to minimize the risk? How's the food being warehouse and stored? What do we do if there are some problems? Now we look at the private sector. What does the private sector concern itself with? And those standards, again, I would suggest they begin to look similar. What are the requirements for the site and are these, is the site being approved according to these private sector standards? The construction and the control of handling the product, storing the product, the personnel hygiene and their welfare, the personnel processing practices, the importance of training the personnel, the water, the ice, the air that comes in contact with the food while the food is being processed, the storage and transportation, separating the function of where we're cleaning the raw materials from where we're packaging the final materials. Let's not have those occurring in the same space so that we minimize the risk of cross contamination, waste disposal, and then how are you maintaining the exterior of your facility? So we look at the government regulations, we look at the private sector standards, and again we see similarities. Just some very brief examples. The sanitary operations, these are details of what the FDA requires when it comes to processing the food. How do we assure that we have a sanitary operation? The general maintenance of the building? Are the substances being cleaned and sanitized? Where are we storing the toxic materials? What's necessary for actual testing of the product to make sure that our product is safe? Continuing with this example, the control of the pests that we know that the rodents, the insects and so forth are not gaining access to the food while it's being processed. The food contact surfaces are sanitized and that they're meeting the sanitation standards while the food is being processed in whatever the manufacturing practices that we're using in our business. And then the sanitation of even non-food contact surfaces, we want to make sure that we are not contaminating the product. So after we look at the federal regulations very quickly, now let's take a quick look at the private sector standards. Are they similar or are there some differences? Right. And the answer to that really is they're very similar in the U.S. here. And so what they do here with the SQF standard is they get a little bit more particular and they start naming like in the 11 to 12.2. You'll see benches, tables, conveyors, mixers, mincers. They actually include a few examples for you, which helps when you're creating your plan. But the big message here is that they are pressing how often you're, or really not how often, it's that you need to clean the equipment that you're producing. What I'm trying to say is that it's still your business. You get to decide how you're doing it. So like I said, how often you get to decide what the thing is is that you've got to stick to it because this is what you have to do. Okay, so you get a little leeway there. We're saying, well, as you go through the methods of cleaning and handling food processing equipment, you need to consider what is to be cleaned, how it's to be cleaned, when it's to be cleaned. They're not telling you exactly the details of how it needs to be in your business because you might have extenuating circumstances, but this is what needs to be done. Okay, very, very similar to regulation. And again, this is for anything being processed in this example. Okay, one example I can give you is in the 13.6, detergents and sanitizers. Well, they're saying you've got to use some type of detergent. Remember, it gets rid of the oil-based food, biofilm, so any food products that are on there. And so, if you're thinking about your own food processing bench in your kitchen when you're producing maybe your sourdough bread or something, are you using a sanitizer and a detergent? And really, it should go detergent, rinse, sanitizer, and don't rinse. And an example that I can give you, you know, as you can see here, the module nor did the regulation say you've got to be using bleach or you've got to be using quaternary and ammonia. It won't say what you have to do, exactly how you have to do it, but it'll say you've got to be clean. An example of a sanitizer that you can mix up and you should do it fresh each time you're going to use it is a gallon of bleach to a table, I'm sorry, a gallon of water. That's important. Other way around, a gallon of water to a tablespoon of bleach, and that's considered a food contact surface, safe, parts per million for a sanitizer. It will kill the bugs. You don't have to rinse it off. Okay? So let's go. Just a couple more slides here. We're right on time. Hopefully, we get a couple seconds. I haven't even heard farmers in the past 20 years say, I spend more time at my desk than I do on my tractor or working with my livestock. That might be true for our small food firms as well. We're going to feel like there's a point that I'm spending more time at the computer than I'm doing, than I'm spending in the orchard or that I'm spending with the product. But it is so important, as already been described this afternoon, we need to document how this business is being operated. But also, as stated earlier this afternoon, before we even start the operation, we need a document in which we describe how we intend to operate the business. We need that plan as to how we're going to operate to minimize these risks. Then we need to keep records as the business is actually being conducted. This is how we harvest it. This is how we handle the food so that we minimize the risk. This is how we process it. This is how we kept it warm to the necessary temperatures, or this is how we kept it cool to the required temperature again. So we end up having the documents as to our planning and then the documents as to how we keep records. This is important. And hopefully we've emphasized this throughout the afternoon that the government inspectors are going to be looking for these records as well as looking at your facilities. The private sector auditors are going to be looking for these records as well as taking a look at your facilities. And I would add, if you ever end up with that ill consumer, hopefully you never do. But if you end up with that ill consumer and that consumer gets a lawyer and comes to you and says your product was unsafe, that lawyer is going to be looking at your documents as well. And you're going to want to have those documents in place for the inspector. You're going to want to have those documents in place for the auditors. You're going to want to have those documents in place to prove to the lawyers, prove to the court that you handled the food safety and you were not the cause of this person's illness. That's right. We can't elaborate enough on this slide to keep your records. And you might say, well, what kind of records do I need? I mean, go back up and look at the different examples that we gave you and you can start establishing little programs, little prerequisite programs we call them. You know, pest control program. You might set traps or even have fly bait traps and you check them once a month. That would be a record that you would keep. You might keep that. You started your production at 8 a.m. and you sanitized all of the food contact surfaces with your 200 parts per million bleach solution I gave you. That would be an example of a record you would start. So we can't stress it. The last slide this afternoon then is to say, okay, does my firm need to comply with all of these standards? And the answer is some of our small firms know you don't. But on the other hand, the consumers are beginning to expect the food industry to meet these standards. Even if you are not legally required by regulation to meet all these standards at this time, I would suggest if you look to the future, begin to take the time, become familiar with these standards. Begin to adopt these standards in your practice, in your business, because at some point they will be upon all of us. That's exactly right. You know, anybody who is producing food for other people, especially for profit, at some point you are going to have some type of audit or requirements from a food safety inspection standard that you'll have to undergo. What's your business? So maybe not every one of these regulations applies, but the standards are there that you should be using as an example. We're tying this up. We can stay online for another minute or two to see if there are any questions. I don't see any questions at this point. Thank you. It was great to be part of this two-person team and to have the opportunity to be part of this program. Any questions? Thank you, everybody. Okay, thank you, everyone.