 Welcome, everyone, to the 10th session of our 2021 Field to Fork webinar series. My name is Julie Gardner Robinson. I'm a Food and Nutrition Specialist with NDSU Extension, and I will be your host for today's webinar. Our final webinar of the year will feature Amy Ilg from the North Dakota Department of Health. And we hope you've been enjoying joining us for the entire series of 11 webinars. And if you missed any, they are all archived. We are using the Zoom webinar function this year. You will all be in listening mode today without cameras or microphones. People watching this live will be able to ask questions in the chat box. So please go ahead and type your questions in the chat, and I will pose those questions to our speaker after her presentation today. Next, I have a special request for all viewers of both the live talk and any of the archives. To maintain our funding sources and offer these types of programs in the future, I ask that you take a very short survey that will land in your email inbox shortly after today's talk. We will have random prize drawings, so you may receive a prize in the mail if you win. After submitting your survey, you will be directed to a second survey to enter your name and complete mailing address. I also offer two acknowledgements today. First to the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service for our Field to Fork funding. And we also have a contribution from Purdue University through a grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture. And we thank all of these entities for their support. And now it's time for me to introduce our featured speaker. I'm very pleased to introduce Dr. Landa Nawadake. In a unique joint appointment between Kansas State University and the University of Missouri, Landa Van Der Waal Nawadake serves a state extension food safety specialist for both Kansas and Missouri. She works with county and district extension agents and other stakeholders in both states to develop programming and resources in food safety, focusing on the consumer, on the produce grower, and also to farmers market venues. Landa has worked for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization based in Rome, Italy, and also has extensive experience living and traveling in Africa. She grew up on a farm in East Central, South Dakota. Welcome Landa. Thank you very much, Julie. Thank you so much for the invitation. I really was excited to be able to be a part of this. And as Julie said, I'm a very proud South Dakotan. A very proud Dakotan, I should say, probably. And I have family and friends and so on that live in North Dakota. So it's really fun to be able to present. I'll just want to say really quickly, I was thinking about it. I was telling my mom it was quite different to put a presentation together on the green and gold because I was in track and field in college. So I was a jackrabbit. And so I came up to the Fargo Dome quite a few times for track meets. And usually I got beaten by the NDSU colleagues. They're really good at athletics. So anyway, it's very different for me to have the green and gold. But it's been a wonderful regional collaboration, I guess, that we should have a partnership that we have in the North Central region. So I really was excited to be part of this. And I know that there's people that might be listening from all over our North Central region. So now that I've been traveling around the world and have come back to the North Central region, I think it's a great place to be. And we can really learn a lot from each other and work together, I think. So yeah, happy to be here today. And thanks again for the invitation. And thanks to all of you that you could join today. And hopefully the information that I'll provide, I tried to make it quite general so that it will be applicable to anyone from any state that might be listening. Because we know that there's a lot of best practices that are the same, no matter what state you're from. We recognize that the realities, the regulations, particularly, will be different in different states. So you should always check with your local regulatory authority, whoever that might be in your area to find out what the regulations are. But the food safety best practices are basically the same, no matter where you are. I cover two states in my job. I cover both Kansas and Missouri. So I'm based in the Kansas City area and have offices on both sides of the border. So I'm very used to saying, in this state, this is the regulations. In this state, this is the regulations. But in both states, these are the best practices. So that, again, that's the same for every state that might be watching. The best practices are the same. So today I'm going to talk. Here's my outline. I'm going to be talking about why food safety is important. And then I'll be talking about just vendor food safety tips. So if you are a food safety vendor or if you are a food vendor at farmer's markets, what things should you be thinking about? I'll talk a little bit about food labeling as well, because that is something, again, that we need to be thinking about. And then providing samples, I'll just say right now, I'll probably mention it in the section two. I love going to farmer's markets and I have three young kids. And so we love to go to farmer's markets and we love the samples. I do. My kids do. But we just want to make sure it's done safely so that people aren't going to get sick from the samples because, unfortunately, it can happen. And then I'll talk a little bit about some resources that are available if you have questions in this area. So and I think we have some polls here. So thank you, Scott. So if you want to just fill out this poll, you should be able to select one for the first question there. And I see people are filling it out. Great. So do you currently sell food at farmer's markets is the first question. And then the second one, you know, what state are you from? Just just have it's fun to kind of get a good idea of where people might be from that are watching this so we can get a sense of who's in the audience. So and, you know, this is the thing about having webinars now. You know, we don't get to have that personal interaction and kind of chat with the person sitting next to you. So this is kind of our our attempt to kind of help you still be able to kind of feel connected to the other people that are that are here today. So all right. Great. We're getting a good percentage in there. I think we'll go ahead and end the polling here. So so we can see that most of the people that are joining here today are service providers or work in extension. And then about half and half are are currently selling at farmers markets or plan to in the future. And I know that for some farmers this time of year starts to be when they get out in the field more, although I know in the northern parts of the North Central region, there's been snow lately. My mom mentioned that to me. So so I know that snow has been coming. And then most of the viewers are from North Dakota, but then we also have some from my home state as well as Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and others as well. So so great to have all of you. So I'm going to go ahead and keep going here. So so why is food safety important? And I'll just I'll I'll talk a little bit about my family. They're probably not listening today, so I could I could share with with them. But my brother lives in North Central, South Dakota. He lives kind of south of Aberdeen. So and I remember one time I went, you know, I went home with him. I went to go visit him and his kids. And this was, you know, maybe 10 years ago or something. But I just remember I went to the Brown County fair with him and Aberdeen and he, you know, and he's a farmer. I grew up on a farm and he my brother is still farming. And he said he said when he was introducing me to his friends, he said, this is my sister, Launda. She's the one that tells us what not to do. I thought, well, that's a really nice way to introduce me. You know, I think in the area of food safety, we some, you know, sometimes we think of it as like, oh, it's all like, you know, like, don't do this, don't do that, don't do that. But, you know, when we think about food safety in a positive way, you know, we're just thinking about providing products that are, you know, as safe as possible. You know, we just want to assure customers that, you know, that their health is important to us. And and, you know, I I'll just say, too, that, you know, in my experience with farmers, again, growing up on a farm, my brothers are farming, you know, my cousins are farmers. You know, I have not met farmers that want to make people sick. But, you know, sometimes we just have to make sure that we're thinking through all the different things that we're doing that could potentially cause people to get sick and just reduce that likelihood as much as possible. So and then also, we always have to think about, unfortunately, in our society, we have to think about protecting our markets, too. You know, unfortunately, people sometimes will sue. You know, they think they got sick from your product and they could, you know, they could decide to sue you. Or, and I think the next slide talks more about this. Just the lie, just so liability, but also just the reputation of your market segment or of your market. You know, again, in today's society, people can put something on Facebook or whatever other social media platform. So quickly they can just say, ah, don't eat food from X producer X farmers market or X type of food because it made me sick. And, you know, so that can really cause a bad reputation for for markets as well. So, you know, we just want to protect ourselves from that as much as possible. And there has been such a, the first point that's there on the slide, there has been outbreaks associated with local food. So, you know, unfortunately, it can happen. You know, most of the time we hear about in the news outbreaks that are linked to to large, you know, to dole and to big, big food companies because more people are eating their product. So it's more people that might get sick. So it's easier for those illnesses to get traced back to the original source, but but it still does happen even in small scale production, even through farmers markets. We do know of cases specifically where it's happened. You know, it's just not as likely to make the news because fewer people are getting sick and it's harder to trace it back because of the smaller numbers, but it can happen. We just want to make sure we prevent it as much as possible. So just some food burn illness statistics. And, you know, again, some of you have maybe heard of these before, but just just to reiterate, you know, unfortunately, every year we estimate that one in six people do get sick from food burn illness. So, you know, I see we have 62 participants in the in this webinar right now. So that means about 10 of us, you know, on average about 10 of us on this call, you know, we'll get food burn illness sometime this year. And, you know, I've had food burn illness. I'm sure it was food burn illness. I didn't actually trace it back. But, you know, it's not fun at all. And, you know, you just don't want people to be getting sick. But unfortunately, it can even lead to hospitalizations and death, of course. And so, you know, we really just want to prevent that from happening as much as we can. The thing with food burn illness, even like I just said, you know, it's very highly underreported. So I think that I might have had food burn illness, but I didn't go to the doctor. You know, most people don't go to the doctor unless it's really bad, of course. So then we don't know for sure if, you know, who's all getting a food burn illness because there's no way to test it to see, you know, what really happened. So it's highly underreported the number of food burn illnesses that actually happen. So, again, like I mentioned, you know, food burn illness unfortunately does affect markets and it reduces consumer confidence. You know, I as a consumer, like I mentioned, I have three young kids. If I'm going to a market to buy products, you know, I might think, I don't know, you know, this particular product's a little bit risky. I feel like I don't think I want to buy that. So because, you know, maybe I heard that somebody got sick from that type of product last week. So you just want to, you know, encourage that consumer confidence and encourage people to come to the market that it's a safe place to buy food, that it's a good healthy source of food. Just want to do all we can to bolster that image. So when we think about the people that we're particularly thinking about, when we think about food-borne illness, it's really, you know, our most vulnerable populations. And so this picture is an old picture, but I like it, so I've kept it. This is my grandma and my daughter when she was, you know, a few months old. And so, you know, these are the populations that we really think about when we think about food-borne illness. So we want to make sure that we're providing, and a lot of times, you know, these are the people that might be shopping at the farmer's market. The young, old, you know, people that are pregnant or people that might be sick, you know, we want to make sure that we're particularly thinking about protecting those populations when we're serving and selling food. So now here's some kind of tips that we'll talk about when we're thinking about, you know, how to sell our food at the farmer's market as safely as possible. So, you know, when we're thinking about a farmer's market, it's a little bit of a different setting than a grocery store, of course. And when you're thinking, when you're a farmer's market vendor, we just have to think through, you know, ways that potentially could cause food-borne illness. So what are things that we can do, you know, to reduce those risks as much as possible? So the first one here, and by the way, I think I just remembered, I think I had another poll I wanted to show. Here it is. So, okay, now it's launched. It looks like, sorry. I think I was going to launch it earlier and I forgot. But if you want to vote for this one now, so if you do sell food at farmer's markets, what foods do you sell? Or, you know, if you're interested in selling in the future, what foods are you interested in selling? So this will kind of give me an idea of what sort of examples to talk about when I'm talking about different kinds of food. So again, this is your chance to kind of participate a little bit. So if you do sell at farmer's markets or if you're interested in selling at farmer's markets in the future, what types of foods do you sell? Great, so here's the results of the poll. So baked goods is a big one. And then yes, if you did write other then you can type that in the chat too. But so baked goods, produce and canned foods are kind of our top ones here. So very good. I will say, I know for me personally, I love getting baked goods at the farmer's market and produce, you know, those are all popular ones. So great, thank you. Okay, so when we are thinking about what we're selling at the farmer's market, you know, whether it's baked goods or produce or canned foods, meats, you know, maybe some people that'll watch the recording are selling meats and other things too. Just thinking about reducing possible cross-contamination from one type of food to the other. You know, I found this picture on the internet and you know, I think this might easily be a staged picture. This probably isn't how they're actually displaying their foods at the farmer's market. But, you know, we definitely don't wanna have, looks like, you know, ground beef there. We don't wanna raw meat just laying on top of our produce, you know, your beets or turnips or whatever those are there. Leafy greens in any case, you know, make sure that your meat is separate. Any raw meat is separate from anything that might not be cooked before you're eating it. So just keeping, you know, raw meat away from anything that's ready to eat or fresh produce, you know, just having them separate. And again, probably a lot of people do this, but just a reminder to always be thinking about that, how we can keep those that produce away from the things like raw meat. This is also something to think about when, you know, you're bagging food for your customers or if the customers are bagging their foods, you know, if you are selling meat as well as produce, it'd be good to have, you know, separate bags for that. So that the customers are, you know, do like separating their products as well afterwards. You know, bags is a complicated topic, especially, you know, I know some places have plastic bag bands and some places have, you know, some places because of COVID, you know, have restrictions on reusing bags. And so, you know, so that's a little bit of a complicated topic, but in any case, you know, if you are going to be reusing bags, make sure that they are clean, you know, you as a vendor, if you're going to be giving bags and some places might say no reused bags. So, but you know, if you're going to be using just bags that you have at home, make sure that they're clean. And that's a good rule for anybody, you know, don't want to keep dirty bags around in any case. So, and then just also thinking about, you know, if you're going to be having, if you're going to be doing any product samples or that sort of thing, you know, make sure that you're washing, rinsing, sanitizing any food context surfaces between uses. Or if you're, you know, if you're selling like a prepared meat, like a barbecue or something like that. And then you're also selling raw foods, you know, make sure that those are completely kept separate. So just keeping, you know, raw things away from ready to eat things in every, you know, everywhere throughout your operation is really important to think about. Okay, so the next thing for farmers, market vendors to think about is just practicing good personal hygiene. And this is probably something that, you know, again, you've probably heard many times, you know, I think a lot of moms talk about this a lot too. But, you know, just making sure that if you are a vendor at the farmer's market that you're wearing clean clothes, you know, you have clean hands, just preventing bacteria from transferring bacteria from your hands or from you to your food. So, you know, things to think about. And again, you know, in fact, this slide I wrote before COVID, but, you know, shaking hands with your customers. Again, before COVID, we didn't think about transferring COVID that way, but, you know, we can always transmit germs by shaking hands. So, and I'm not saying you shouldn't shake the hands of your customers, but, you know, you just really have to think through that and make sure that you are, you know, just keeping in mind that like, okay, I've touched somebody else's hand. I don't know what their hand touched, you know, so now I have to consider that my hand could be dirty. So, you know, just always thinking about that. Touching money, you know, as a farmer's market vendor, you're getting, you know, $5 bills or $10 bills from people. And, you know, that money can be dirty. So, you know, thinking about, okay, and again, maybe you can, if you can, you can have two people in your booth so that one person can handle the money and one person can handle the food. You know, if that's not possible, you just have to make sure you're doing, thinking through doing all that you can to reduce the chance that, you know, you've just touched some dirty money, not dirty in the literal sense that it's dirty, not in another way, but then you shouldn't be touching that dirty money. And then with that same hand, you know, helping somebody grab some leafy greens with your bare hands, you know, just always be thinking through, how can I reduce that as much as possible? This picture here, I don't know how well you can see it, but I circled, you know, his hand, it looks like it has his money in his hand, that vendor, and it's right above that basket of leafy greens. You know, I mean, he's probably touching those leafy greens with his hand. You know, that's a little concerning that, you know, A, he could drop the money into the leafy greens, so that's really not good. Or, you know, he's just touching it with his hand and then the dirty, the money is touching that leafy greens too. So again, just think through how you can reduce that risk as much as possible. You know, also touching animals, like if you have an animal in your booth of your own, or, you know, a customer brings in an animal, you know, make sure you're not petting that animal and then, you know, touching again, the leafy greens or a loaf of bread that's not in a bag or whatever it is, just thinking through that so you can reduce that chance also. You know, if you're touching soiled vegetables, you know, you have dirty potatoes or whatever, you know, just you don't want to touch those and then be touching strawberries or something like that. So just always thinking through how can I have good personal hygiene in that way? Washing hands often. And again, this is just like a good practice. Usually there's not really regulations for farmers market vendor, how often they should wash their hands. I will talk more about a hand washing station when I get to the slides about samples, but so just thinking through keeping your hands clean. I think one thing that COVID has taught a lot of people is that, you know, hand hygiene is really important. So keeping your hands clean is important. Bear hand contact, I put a question mark there because, you know, there's again, some places in the U.S. I think California has regulations that you know, bear hand contact with ready-to-eat foods or maybe they took that away, but different places had different regulations on bear hand contact with ready-to-eat foods. So bear hand contact doesn't necessarily, no bear hand contact doesn't necessarily mean you have to wear gloves. It means that you could use tongs or deli paper or something like that, but generally speaking, it's a best practice not to have bear hand contact with ready-to-eat foods. So I don't want, you know, my hands touching your loaf of bread or, you know, your leafy greens, you know, try to stay away from that as much as possible is definitely a best practice. No eating in your booth, you know, you don't want the germs from your mouth going onto your hand when you're eating something and then, you know, touching somebody's food, you know, again, just reducing that risk as much as possible. The next thing to think about in terms of things that vendors can do is just making sure that you're transporting, storing, and then displaying, incident-less that, but your foods at the proper temperatures to prevent rapid bacterial growth. So, you know, some of you might all be familiar with these temperatures, but just as a reminder, if you are selling, you know, hot prepared foods, so if you're selling, you know, whether it's pizza or beer rocks or samosas or whatever, or meat or whatever, you know, keep those hot foods at 140 degrees or above. Regulations might say 135, but for just the best practice would be 140 or above, because it's easier to remember 140 to 40. So if you're selling foods at room temperature, you know, again, a best practice would be to have it less than 80, but sometimes it's a hot August day and it could be 90 degrees, and I mean, that's understandable. But, you know, just trying to keep things, you know, if possible, keep it shaded, you know, don't have things sitting out in the sun for a long time so things are getting too hot. And then the quality's not gonna be as good either. It's not gonna look very good if it's kind of wilted and just sitting in the sun for a long time. Cold perishable foods, you know, if you're selling, if you have potato salad or, you know, dairy products, if you're selling, you know, some cheeses or something, you'd wanna keep those less than 40 for sure. So again, that temperature danger zone that we talk about in food safety is 40 to 140. You wanna keep perishable foods out of that temperature danger zone of 40 to 140 as much as possible. Again, the regulations are usually 41 to 135, but 40 to 140 is easier to remember. So hopefully you can remember that easier. Frozen foods, you know, definitely less than 15, less than zero is better. But, you know, sometimes it's hard to keep things really cold. Again, if it's a hot day and you've got coolers and you're opening and closing the coolers, you know, if you're selling frozen meats, just keep those less than 15 for sure. And again, the regulations might be a little different from your area, but, you know, these are best practices. You know, and again, different places and even different farmers markets, I think sometimes have different regulations. If you need a mechanical cooler, like an electric type of cooler or not, but, you know, follow what the regulations are in your area for sure. But definitely, you know, using coolers or ice and ice packs or ice to keep things cold is key. This table here that I have, we actually have this on our website, the R&K website that I'll share at the end. But this is just something that, you know, you as a vendor could give out to your customers if they're not sure, you know, where is the best place to store their produce once they get it home. And this is useful for you too as a produce grower. If you don't have, you know, lots of different coolers and can set them at different temperatures. This is just kind of broad strokes, you know, for both safety and quality, where is the best place to keep your produce? So, you know, when people buy tomatoes, you know, they want them to be juicy and tasty. And if you keep the tomatoes in the fridge, you know, they're not always gonna be as, you know, juicy and tasty as they would be otherwise. And so, you know, we do think about what things are safe to keep at room temperature and then what things are, you know, have to be in the fridge for safety. So cut, anytime something is cut, you know, chopped, slice of watermelon, you know, chopped carrots or chopped, whatever. Those things need to be refrigerated for safety purposes or if they're peeled, you know, for safety purposes, you have to keep them refrigerated. But otherwise, you know, for safety purposes, you can keep most whole fruits and vegetables at room temperature. But for quality purposes, it's better to keep some things refrigerated. They'll last longer, their shelf life will be longer. And then for some things, you know, the quality is really better if you keep them, if you let them, you know, be warmer. So this list kind of helps consumers to be able to keep track of that. You know, where should I keep my peppers? You know, that's one that's maybe more, like people aren't always sure where they should be kept for best quality and safety. So that chart's intended to help with that. So now just shifting a little bit to talking about food labeling. And so food labeling is something, you know, if you're going to be selling baked goods, and notice a lot of people are selling baked goods that you do have to think about. If you're selling threshold produce, you know, there's usually not requirements for labeling per se. Like that's a watermelon. It's pretty obvious that that's a watermelon. But with things like baked goods, you know, the consumer needs to know, you know, is this rye bread or is this whole wheat bread or whatever? So, you know, putting the identity of the products is a requirement by FDA. And then the quantity, and that's just so that, you know, I as a consumer can compare. So, you know, I can look at two different booths or I can even look within your booth and see like, okay, you have a pint of salsa for X price and you have a quart of, or let's say maybe jam. I have a pint of jam that's this price then I have a quart of jam that's this price or a, you know, a half pint that's X price and a pint that's this price. So then I as a consumer know, okay, I'm getting a pint. I'm getting a half pint. So the price is, you know, which one's cheaper for me to buy. So that's why we need to list the quantity. Declaration of responsibility is just so that, you know, we, if I as a consumer really like your product, I know like, hey, this is who I bought it from. Or if I have a problem with the product then I know who to contact as well. So you do have to list that. Just who's, you know, taking responsibility for that product. If there's two or more ingredients you do have to have an ingredient list. And I think it's, I think at the end I mentioned our website. We have fact sheets on like more details on food labeling and DSU and other universities probably do too. But just to help you as a producer, as a farmers market vendor know, you know, what has to be included. But so then the ingredient list also needs to be there. So that people know, particularly with allergens, you know, if it contains rye flour or wheat flour or if it contains milk or whatever, you know, there's eight major allergens that we have to make sure we list. So you need to make sure you include that. So customers that have allergies will know what products to be looking for. Additional information is required for meat products. I won't go into that today, but, you know, there's more information available on specifically what you need if you're selling meat products. Nutrition facts, I often get this question. So I decided to include this slide. Nutrition facts, it's only required if you're, you know, a larger producer basically. And then if you're making any sort of health claim on the label. So, you know, this is a cereal box here. But you know, if you're saying this is high in fiber this is low in fat. Like then you have to have nutrition facts so that I as a customer can see, yes, that is in fact high in fiber or it is in fact low in fat. So you can't just say on your label, this is a sugar-free food or maybe that's not a good, this is a low calorie food unless I can look at the nutrition facts and know yes it is or it's not. So those are the main times that you need to have nutrition facts. And then, you know, it's, sometimes it's just a nice idea to have it but it's not required if you're a smaller producer and if you're not making a label claim. There's different, like I know Julie Garden Robinson mentioned that she can help producers in North Dakota with making nutrition facts panels and our colleagues in many states can provide that service too. We have, we provide that service in Kansas here as well. Okay, so we're gonna shift now to talking about samples. So providing samples. Like I said, I love samples. I think they're great. Like I love to, you know, try different things and, you know, just see, you know, different varieties of apples or different varieties of fruit and how they taste and so on. But, you know, we really have to make sure that it's done safely so people are not getting sick. And, you know, kids often love samples. So, you know, we really have to be careful because they're vulnerable, they're a more vulnerable population to food-borne illness. So you have to be careful to do it properly. So again, every locality might have a different regulations in terms of what they require for sampling, but these are just some best practices that would be applicable anywhere. So having a hand-washing station is important. And in Kansas, I know that it's not required if you're not gonna be, you know, if you have like pre-portioned honey or something that you're giving as samples, you know, if you're not gonna be doing something at the market with that, then you wouldn't have to have a hand-washing station. But if you're cutting pieces of apples at the market, then, you know, it's, you really need to have a hand-washing station to make sure that your hands are clean when you're doing that work of cutting those apples up. So, and I have a slide later that'll talk more about the details of what's required for a hand-washing station. So then the next thing is a three-compartment sanitizing station. And again, that's just if it's needed, like if you're gonna be needing to wash your knife or wash your cutting board, then you would need to have that sanitizing station available. If you're bringing disposable knife, if you're gonna use disposable knives, which they don't cut very well, but, you know, or if you bring enough clean utensils to do what you need to do, then you would not have to have that sanitizing station available. But, you know, generally speaking, if you're gonna be cutting those apples or plums that are there, you know, you probably need to have, you need to be able to wash your knife and wash your cutting board to keep it clean so that, you know, germs aren't growing. And then, you know, just following sanitary procedures, just doing things in a clean way, again, thinking through how you can reduce those risks as much as possible. You know, I talked about food storage container, food storage temperature, sorry, earlier. So as much as possible, keep your samples above, if they're hot, they need to be kept above 140 degrees. If they're cold, keep them below 40 degrees. But, you know, if you do, if things are gonna be kept in that temperature danger zone, that 40 to 140, then just make sure the samples are not there for more than two hours. So that, you know, people are, so that that perishable food, if it's something like chopped lettuce, or sorry, not chopped lettuce, you could sample chopped lettuce, but chopped apples, you don't want those sitting at room temperature for more than two hours. I would recommend probably less than that, but that's the minimum for safety would be less than two hours at room temperature. And then, you know, appropriate tools. So in this picture here, you can see tongs. So, you know, that people are not going in with their bare hands to pick up the samples is really important. As I mentioned, I have three young kids, my youngest is four, and boy, his hands are usually really dirty, unfortunately, and I don't want his dirty hands going in there and rummaging around and finding an apple. And then, you know, who knows who's gonna, the poor person that comes after him to pick up an apple, you know, we don't want them to get all his germs from his hands. So washing, produce before cutting and offering is important to, you know, again, that apple or peaches, watermelon, whatever it is, you know, just make sure that you are washing it before you're cutting it. Here, I mentioned no server, bare hand contact was ready to eat food. Again, I talked about that in some previous slides, but, you know, even if you are gonna be wearing gloves, so gloves is one option for, you know, preventing that no bare hand contact with foods, you still need to wash your hands before you put the gloves on. Should have grabbed a glove to show you, but you know, when you're putting a glove on, you're still gonna be touching it to get it on. And so that, you know, the palm of your hand right here, you know, when you're putting that glove on, you still could be getting that hand. Your hand might be dirty and then it's getting your glove dirty and now it's gonna be here. So you do want us to wash your hands even before you put gloves on. And the glove could break, you know, it could easily just, your fingernails are a little too sharp or something and then the glove breaks and then now your dirty hands are touching the food if you didn't wash them before you put the gloves on. So just again, thinking through samples, you know, providing individual servings away from the sales food. So, you know, having like toothpicks or individual cups, this picture is really a better way to give out apple samples because then, you know, my son can go in there and just grab the one toothpick or I can go and grab one toothpick for him and, you know, give it to him so that he's not touching everything. You know, we just, again, we don't want, you know, dirty hands touching all the samples. Keeping cut produce before, below 40, kind of mentioned this already, but yeah, if it's, if it's kept it at that temperature for more than two hours and you need to get rid of it. The best practice would definitely be to check that every hour. You know, like this picture, you can't really see it very well but those apples are on a plate and then the plate is sitting on ice and then it's covered with a cover. So that ice is keeping those apples colder but it's, you know, the apples still probably aren't that cold but it's colder. So you do wanna check, you know, every hour to see how well you're doing and if it's getting to be too cold or too warm then you can, you know, put more ice on or you might have to discard those samples. So putting on a small amount of sample makes sense anyway so that you don't, that it stays fresher and it's gonna stay safer too. Okay, so providing samples under cover is a good practice so that you can, you know, that you'll be able to not have birds coming over top of your booth, you know, or insects but birds in particular, you don't want them to accidentally just drop their business right on top of your samples. So having a tent or an umbrella is definitely a best practice. Keeping the insects off is also a best practice. You know, you do not, I mean, and I'm not very, I'm not, how do I say, I encourage to take a sample that has flies flying all over it. So these are the picture on the right there is just some different fly covers that you could use or you could have a fan blowing on the food to kind of keep the flies off. Having a trash receptacle nearby, that's just, you know, for the people that dispose of their toothpicks and their sample cups in keeps things neater but also helps to reduce spread of germs all over. Okay, so as I mentioned, having a handwashing station is a really good idea. It's a best practice if you're providing samples. In some places it's a regulation. So having a handwashing station doesn't have to be expensive. On my next slide, I'll show the estimated costs of a handwashing station. You know, I recognize that it's an extra thing that you have to take along and it's, you know, an extra, you have to set it up in your booth somewhere but, you know, it's really important for keeping things safe as possible. So the key components are having, you know, a container of water, clean water, with a continuous flow spigot. Because, you know, if you have one of those push button containers where you have to push in the water outlet and then you can only wash, you know, you can only put this other hand under here. You know, you can't really wash with two hands. So that continuous flow spigot allows you to turn it on and then you can, you know, wash with two hands and you can wash a lot better than you can just trying to go like this. That doesn't get the tops at all. So continuous flow spigot and then having, you know, a discard bucket for the, for the gray water. And then having paper towels. So not a reusable cloth towel because unfortunately, you know, we don't always do a great job washing our hands if we use a reusable cloth towel, any germs, any dirt that was still on our hands after we wash them is now going onto that cloth towel. And then it's, you know, everybody that uses that cloth towel afterwards is going to keep using those same germs or keep getting exposed to those same germs. So paper towels is really important for food safety and having soap of course is important too. So here's estimated costs. And you know, you can probably get these things a lot cheaper too, but these are just kind of estimated costs, you know, just a water dispenser, 10 gallons of water is probably more than you need, but, you know, five gallons would be, would be good. You know, and that's not too expensive to buy one of those, making sure that it's a continuous flow spigot. Let me see a bucket, you know, paper towel holder. I mean, these things are not expensive. So, so it doesn't have to be expensive, but just, you know, it is important for keeping things safe. And incidentally, if you're a produce grower, the same sort of hand washing station you can have out in your produce fields too, or next to your produce fields to, to be able to wash your hands before you're harvesting and so on in your produce area as well. So washing and sanitizing station. Again, my next slide will show the estimated costs, but you know, this doesn't have to be expensive either. Just, you know, three dish pans works well. You know, one for washing, one for rinsing, one for sanitizing, you know, just using, making sure that your water is potable. You know, that's safer drinking. Usually having it about, you know, above 110 would be good. Again, regulations might vary. Using sanitizers, you know, such as bleach. Generally speaking, we would say 50 parts per million, which is a teaspoon of bleach per gallon would be good for your sanitizing step here, for your ware washing. This is if you're washing, you know, a cutting board or a knife to be doing samples. And then allowing to air dry or clean paper towel, on clean paper towels is the best practice. Or using a paper towel and throwing that away. So here's estimated costs for hand washing station. Again, it's not expensive, but it's just, you know, something else that you have to have, but it's important to make sure that, you know, if you are providing samples that you're not causing people to get sick from those samples. Okay, so as I mentioned, so I do work for both K-State and University of Missouri. I've, we've been putting more of these resources on our K-State website just for logistical purposes, but so this website here is our K-State food safety website. And we have a sub page here on farmers markets, where we have a lot of different, you know, information about sampling, information about food labeling and so on, that's available on this website here. So you are more than welcome to look at that website for more information. These are just some K-State extension resources, but you know, again, I know that extension services in many states that you're all from would have some of these similar resources. In Kansas, we have, it's called the Kansas Value Out of Food Lab. They do product testing, and I know North Dakota has similar services of testing water activity, pH, helping with nutrition facts panels. So again, you can check with Dr. Garden Robinson in North Dakota and then other states, you can check with your local extension people as well. And I just listed our K-State extension food safety website here, which we have, again, a sub website on produce safety and then for produce growers and then the sub website on farmers market vendors as well. So here's my kids and these pictures are so old, I really need to update them, but you know, it's again, when we think about farmers markets, you know, I think about taking my kids there and you know, I love taking them there and you know, just making sure that the foods that they're getting there are safe and healthy as well. So there's my contact information and you know, feel free to contact me or of course your local extension person too for more information. And I'll be happy to take questions. I see there's some stuff in the chat here, so. All right, so I will pose the questions to you. There's a question about baskets, so it was in one of the pictures. They liked the display, but they wouldn't try it. Do you want to comment on containers for food used at farmers markets? You know, it's funny because when I, you know, I put these slides together a while ago and I'm going to go into that slide. And in fact, when I was looking at these slides, I thought the same thing. I thought that's really not a good practice, I don't think. So I should have brought that out when I was talking about it. You know, baskets of course look nice. I would definitely recommend having some sort of like a plastic liner inside of that too. I mean, for one, it's just going to be easier to clean and you know, baskets, you can't clean them. So yes, this is a bad, I really should highlight that when I brought it up. So, you know, the big thing is that your container is cleanable and this clearly is not cleanable. So, but if you wanted to use something like baskets because it looks nice, just having a cleanable plastic liner or disposable plastic liner would be the best practice. But yeah, good question. Right, a question about labeling. So it looks like this person sells cookies and they want to know if each cookie needs to be labeled with ingredients. Right, yeah, so good question. And you know, it kind of depends on your, you know, it depends again, if there are regulations in your area, what those regulations might be. But generally speaking, no, and I know like in Kansas our Department of Agriculture has said as long as the ingredient list is available to the customer like they don't necessarily have to have it on the package. So as long as a customer can get that labeling information when they buy it, then Kansas Department of Ag in any case has said that's enough. So yeah, you know, and especially if you're selling a dozen cookies, you know, you can just put it on the bag. But if you're selling one cookie at a time, you know, you could just have it posted so that people can get that information in that way. Yeah, and definitely check your state's requirements because they're all very different. Kay has a question here. If the market has a hand-washing station, does each individual booth need one? And she sells at a small market and is about 20 feet from the market's hand-washing station. And then she also wants you to address the use of hand sanitizer as a substitute for hand-washing when handling food. These are great questions, everybody. So yeah, in fact, again, I thought about talking about that when I covered the slide and I did it. Again, check with your local regulations, you know, your local authorities because they're the final say. I'll just say my experience in working with regulators in the states that I've worked in is that they wanna make sure that it's reasonable that you are actually gonna wash your hands. So, you know, if you're a busy vendor, you're busy, you know, doing everything, like, you know, and if it's 20 feet away, maybe it is really likely that you are gonna walk down there and wash your hands. But it just has to be, like, it has to be easy for you to wash your hands. So, again, you probably need to just check with your, you know, if there's regulatory authority in your area, check with them. But I would say it has to be convenient for you to wash your hands. If it's a long ways away, probably people aren't gonna really wash their hands. But if it's nearby, then, you know, you might reasonably be expected that you would walk over there and wash your hands and come back to your booth. So, I'll leave that one to the regulators. And then the question about hand sanitizer, yeah, we get a lot of questions on that. I'm sure Julie's answered a lot of questions on that, too. From my perspective, hand sanitizer is really only effective, like, after washing your hands because, and hand sanitizer in, like, the healthcare setting is different than in, like, food preparation settings because in food preparation, you know, you're usually getting some juice or some gunk on your hands. You know, there's stuff on your hands. And putting hand sanitizer on is not gonna do anything if there's stuff on your hands. So, whether it's pieces of meat or, you know, carrot juice or watermelon juice, like, the hand sanitizer is not gonna be effective at getting through that watermelon juice and then getting down to the germs. So, you've got to get rid of the watermelon juice or the, you know, whatever it might be on your hands first. And then you can use sanitizer to sanitize it afterwards. I personally feel like washing your hands well is enough. But if you, you know, if you want to put on hand sanitizer after, that's great. That's an extra step. But for me, it's definitely in food preparation. Hand sanitizer is not a substitute for hand washing. And Suzanne is wondering if you have any best food safety practices for consumers shopping at farmers markets? Yeah, great question. In fact, if I stop my share, I can find that we have a resource. In fact, on that farmers market website that I gave, we have a fact sheet that we have on shopping, it's called Shopping Safe at Farmers Markets. And then we have like a little half sheet that gives kind of tips for consumers to shop at farmers markets. We also did prepare something last year during COVID to give customers, you know, both the COVID safety as well as the food safety tips for shopping at farmers markets. So, so yeah, that is something that let me see, I'll go to this website here. I think it may actually, it's probably just a little bit off the screen here. It's just a little bit further down. There's a fact sheet on for customers on shopping safety. It's on Shopping Safe at Farmers Markets. So yeah, good question. Well, I think you answered all of the questions unless anyone else has a question they want to quickly type in. Sorry, I didn't want to pop in. Oh, here we go. How about a sign that declares that produce should be washed at home and is the shopper's responsibility? Yeah, that's definitely, you know, you can definitely do that. And in fact, yeah, I agree. Like, so as putting on my produce safety hat, we actually, I won't say discouraged farmers from washing their produce, but we really will say to them, you know, if you do wash your produce after harvesting, you have to do it correctly. So if you can get by without washing your produce after harvest, it's really in some ways safer. And like you said, it's really better and even for quality and shelf life purposes, it's better to not wash your produce until right before consumption. So it's really better for the customer to wash it at home. And so I think you can definitely communicate with your customers about, you know, make sure that you are washing your produce at home. If I remember right, that fact sheet that I mentioned for consumers at Farmers Markets, we do mention that to wash your produce at home. And I think I can't remember if it's in this back sheet or not. I can't remember if it is or not, because with this one here, I know on the backside, we have information. This is just the front side of that little handout that we have on the backside of the handout. I know we have some tips. And I think one of the tips we do say to consumers is, you know, to wash your produce when you get at home. So liability-wise, you know, I can't comment on that, but it's definitely, you know, a best, as a vendor, it's good to encourage your customers to wash their produce at home. Yeah. So when you say wash, this is my question. What do you mean by wash? Yeah, that's a very good question. In fact, we've just been talking about we need to prepare some fact sheets on this. I should really use the term rinse. So thank you for calling me. Thank you for drawing my attention to that. Because, yeah, we don't recommend that consumers use soap on their produce. We just recommend they use clean running water. Soap is not intended for consumption, you know. I mean, it's not contented that you wash your produce with soap. It's intended that you, and studies have shown that washing your, that consumers washing their produce with clean running water is really the most effective way to clean your produce. So, yeah, so I need to work on that to use the word rinse. The consumers should rinse their produce at home instead of washing. Yeah. I think you answered Cindy's question. She was asking about putting a sanitizer in it, and you just said to just use plain water. Yeah, I will say, you know, I, as Julie mentioned in my intro, I spent a lot of time in Africa. And in developing countries, we do recommend that consumers use bleach in there if they're going to be eating raw, if they're going to be eating raw produce. I did not, when I was living in developing countries, I used the mantra peel it, cook it, or forget it. So I, generally speaking, didn't eat a lot of leafy, raw leafy greens when I was in developing countries, just because of, you know, additional risk. So, but in the U.S. setting, you know, we don't recommend that you need to use bleach as a consumer. As a produce seller, we would recommend, if you are going to wash your produce, if you're raising produce to sell, we would recommend that you do use a sanitizer, like a, you know, a bleach. But as a consumer at home, you know, you need to make sure that if you are using, if you do want to use something like that as a consumer at home, you need to make sure that you're not using too high of a concentration, because that can cause chemical problems. You know, we call it a chemical hazard rather than a microbiological hazard. So kind of finding that balance of making sure it's the right concentration is important, because a lot of consumers will just pour some bleach in or pour some vinegar in or whatever. And, you know, that could cause just as many problems as the germs that might be there. So, here we go. What is the safest way to display and sell green, such as kale? Yeah, good question. I personally would recommend bagging them yourself at home beforehand so that you don't have to, you know, like this scenario to me is, you know, not great. But one, so one thing that consumers can, or you as a vendor could do, should I don't have a bag easily readily available at the moment, but, you know, take your hand inside the bag and then, you know, reach into the bucket with the, with your hand in the bag. And then, you know, you can pull out your kale, but, you know, maybe putting it in bags at home would be a good way to do it. Again, I know from working in two states, I know that different states kind of have different, they say different things about like closing the bag or different things. So, but, but, you know, that's going to be safer, I think, than having it in baskets for sure. And this will be the final question because we're almost out of time. Does soaking produce in water for some period of time and then rinsing thoroughly after the soaking help remove chemicals that might be used on non-organic produce? You know, I'm not an expert in that area, so I can't really comment. I have not seen any data that shows that that is effective. And Julie probably is familiar with this same set of data. I have not seen any information showing that that's more effective in removing chemicals. What I've seen is that rinsing with clean running water is the most effective way to remove chemicals from food. Sue, Lana and I are on the same page on that one. I think that's all the questions. And I just want to thank you for coming up to North Dakota virtually and joining us and presenting a very interesting seminar. So thank you and thanks to everybody who participated. And remember, we have one more session left and that person will be from our state health department and talking about licensed food establishments. So thank you all and hope to see you next week.