 So, good morning, everyone. Today I'm gonna talk a little bit about food safety for you peak operations. So, on top of what you already have to do on your farm in terms of food safety. There's some tweaks that you have to do for you peak operations because you were selling fresh produce to consumers. There's some some some characters some field procedures process that you have to do to ensure that not only your consumers are getting safe food, but also you're you're having your field safe as well all the time because you're having visitors all the time so you want to ensure that you have safe crops. So we all know that you peak farms are agritourists or a great way to engage the public and educate consumers about agriculture in general, especially with the cats. So it creates business opportunities. It's a good way to start small and grow with your experience and sales, but you have to account for food safety concerns and liability so you're liable for ensuring that your food is safe for your consumers. So few steps that you have to do before your visitors arrive on your facility. Have signage and policies in place. You might have folks that working with you. So make sure that everybody knows safety policies on your farm. Sign in directions for for those ones that are coming to visit your farm so where they can go where they cannot go. Signage for reminding for animals sometimes people think like this is a family event. I'm going to bring everybody including my pets so think about it's not a place to bring their pets and and they're not allowing the field. So make sure that you have a signage for proper hand washing practices or, you know, or you have someone trained on your facility that can guide them. You know, they wash their hands prior to coming or prior to coming in the field and then picking up the fruits and vegetables. So regarding the hand to wash the station so you could you should have a allocated hand washing station, well stock it with liquid so potable water disposable paper towel, a catch and basting so you don't want to that water that it's falling from the people's on your field and a trash specifically with the lead on it so you don't also don't want to you know all the paper towels flowing around and clean available clean bathrooms for your visitors why this is important. It doesn't need to be very complex you don't need to have a fairly, you know, like a specific place with you would always pipe and and everything you need. You can be as simple as this picture, but you know make sure that you have these available for your customers so they understand the importance of hand washing and then you have instructions from them on how to do it. Again, you cannot enforce that because they're visitors they're caught your customers but you must have this available for them with instructions that they must wash their hand before entering the fields. Also employing trainees as I mentioned before it is it's very important they need to know all about food safety policies and practices on the farm so they can guide the visitors for training for handling cash and payment forms for those ones that are handling cash and payment forms. They should not be assisting folks in the field or handling fresh produce they should be located to handling cash and payment forms. If they need to be allocated to the field, they need to know that they need to wash their hands before going to the field. You're trained where visitors can't go and cannot go normally would put signage on your feet on your, you're going to fancy around or you know tape it. But you know, in case people wander around or they walking in places that cannot be your employees are trained that they know that visitors cannot go in that area. I mean, they know how, you know, to tell them this is not supposed to you do not you're not supposed to go to the area. This is their area that you're going to be picking up and then, so they're trained to know all of that, and also handling and preparing the containers that they are going to be using. So make sure that they understand that they need to be cleaned that they cannot be placed on the floor or places in the areas that might, you know, get contaminated or get dirty. What we have all containers that can be one time use containers that you can see, like the, the, the, the plastic containers, or it can be reusable containers plastic or people. Sometimes customer like to bring their own. It's okay, as long as they're understanding that they are not bringing contamination to your field so assessing that this container is appropriate for foods for putting food on it, or you're not bringing any risks to your fields. That should be fine, but you know you need to consider that part but if you're using one time use or reusable containers that both options. If you're using reusable containers, you'll make sure that they're cleaned and sanitized after use. So that is pretty important. So while you have visitors on your farm. You must educate them on food safety policies that you have are your policies. You have all the signage and everything in place. Now you have to make sure that they understand the basic practices they don't need to read the whole documentation you don't need to give them a training, but you know, you have some reading documentation that is available or some signage so you can have a website that they can come in and read about your, your, your place. Always always encourage hand washing so that's why it is important to have a hand wash station there. Again, you cannot force them to wash their hands but you know you always encourage and tell them why it is important to wash their hands before and after picking them up. Not eating in the field I know this is very tempting especially for kids, but you know tell them that is not appropriate to eat in the field, you know we can people you never know when people are sick, or they're eating and dropping on the floor or you know dropping in on top of your, or your crops so that could be a risk. So make sure that you know if they want to eat something you can eat on the side that it can pick it up and then you know this is a good way to educate especially kids. And do not harvest dropped or contaminated produce so make sure that you know they understand that if you're they're picking up produce that is on the floor. It's hard to say when you're picking strawberries because they're grown next to the plastic or next to the ground, but if they're fall off the, the plant, or if you're picking blueberries or you know, bush, or tree fruit trees, they're not picking the ones that are on the ground they're picking the ones that are hanging on the, on the plants, or they can see if there is a hoop around or any like a bird drops or anything. They are not supposed to pick or eat those fruits. Also, for animals, I mentioned, you make sure that you have signage is in your visitors understand that hats are not allowed on the field in the farm that can stay in the parking lot or in the car or in the areas that are not close to the produce fields. But people have service animals, you know, and then they can, you know, they can bring their enemies with them, but they must be kept on their control. If, and there's few questions that you are only allowed to do for service animals so first you can ask them if that is a service animal required for disability. And also what at work or at what worker test has the animal been trained to do. Those are the two only questions that you can make to the person you're not you cannot make any other questions about what kind of disability, what kind of, you know, specific things that the dog does, or that's the only two You know, and then if they say yes in their, their train animals for disability. You have to allow them to have their animal with them but again, the animal must be on their control if the animals is running around or you know that you see the animal. So if you're in the field or P in the field you can call the rotation and say yeah this is not appropriate because there's a train animal should not be doing that. So if you want to know a little bit more about service animals on you pick up operations. There is a, there is a publication at UGA extension. Only about talking about service animal and you pick up form so this is the, the publication you can find it easily on their website. So when you have is it is on your farm. Let them know where they can and they cannot go so a good way is to have signings and directions to the field where they can go so mostly you have those few that tape it so they know where they can go and signings that this way, or do not pick these area, you know, so you make sure that you have signage and it's well sign it. They know where they can go, rope it off the limit of the air so that's what mostly people do and protect farm equipment and vehicles from visitors so you have, you have trucks you have your some some carts around and you have some equipment harvesting and produce and then other equipments that they would be dangerous, especially to kids like they like to climb, and they, you know, they're very sneaky. So make sure that you keep those, you protect your consumers or visitors from going to this areas that you have equipment and vehicles. After you have your visitors on your farm, you know, you have to make sure that your your area is organized and it's clean and it's safe for the next ones to come, whether it's next day or whether it's in within a week. So we have to clean and sanitize equipments that have been used during the time, clean the bathrooms, replenish with any supplies and containers that you have on the bathroom or in the hand washing station, and review any policy and inform so maybe you saw you have your food safety policies in place, but maybe you saw something that was not thought before ahead, and you can change it you can review your policy you can change things and for the next time to avoid incidents. Also evaluate the field for new concerns. So remove any trash or debris that are left in the field, you know it's hard to control especially and you have a lot of people coming in and a high traffic of people during the day. But also if you if you saw people bringing in service animals to their area, you know, give a walkthrough to your field and make sure that there's no animal dropping or anything that you know the animal could brought in and contaminated the field. Remove any dropped and damaged food you know that is very common when you go especially you know strawberries. It's hard again it's hard to to monitor everybody and the people eat and then the harvest one. They don't want to that one and they drop it on the floor so it's it's common to have drop it or damage food all over your field so make sure you remove that also because it could be an attractive to to other animals during the night you know they could be attracted to pass and animals coming to your field and then and then becoming a risk as well and also damaging your your crop so make sure you clean everything after they leave and then make sure that your fields are are they're supposed to come for the next records and documentation keep your logs and food safety documentations in place. And always review your reading policies and signs, maybe you're not very clear with the signage so people are a little bit confused. So you can redo them for next time when they come and they say well I don't think it was very clear I don't think it was big enough. So I'm going to redo it so reviewing your reading policies and signs. You know, especially when you have visitors in your farm you're not, you, they're not like trained staff. They, they're not trained at all especially kids so you have to record any incident that you saw. And what was the corrective action what did you do to you know to resolve that incident and then it's not a problem it's it's it's ideal to record any incident especially pointed out and and what was the. Corrective measure that you did at the time maybe you have to review or reading policies again, based on the incident that happened and review records of sales so this is a good way to keep track on, you know, on what you've been how much you've been making. And especially if you're trying to go from small to a small operation to a larger operation. Always keep records of your field lots crops, they, and everything because you know, people might come to your farm and say, I got I ate your strawberries and I got sick. So I say, Well, I do, I grow strawberries following safety practices here's my documentation. So it's your liability. So make sure you keep all of that and on your records on your keep all your documentation up to date. So that's pretty much it for pick up operations so that's pretty much for this type of unique operation but you know on top of that you should be doing all of the food safety practices that are in place for growing and harvesting fresh produce. So if you want to learn more about all this would say to practices, you can get in contact with us with the food safety team and then the commercial 14 we provide a ton of education and training for you. So if you're interested you want to learn more about food safety training and practices, just get in touch with us.