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April 15, 2013
WOOSTER, Ohio -- Ohio State University’s Fruit and Vegetable Safety Program has three new workshops scheduled on good agricultural practices, or GAPs, for Ohio produce growers. The workshops, which are the same at each location, will teach ways to reduce the risk of food-borne illness from fresh produce.
Organizers say a good understanding of GAPs has become especially important due to the Food and Drug Administration’s recently proposed new food safety rules.
The instructors will be from Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES), of which the safety program is a part.
Among the workshops’ topics will be soil safety, water safety, worker training, worker hygiene, recordkeeping, traceability, good handling practices and standard operating procedures.
The workshops are:
- April 19, 1-4 p.m., in the Toledo Botanical Garden’s Crosby Conference Center, 5403 Elmer Drive, Toledo. Registration is $10, cash or check only, in advance or at the door. To register in advance, send contact information and payment to Lee Richter, Lucas County office, Ohio State University Extension, 5403 Elmer Drive, Toledo, OH 43615. Make checks payable to “Ohio State University.” For more information, call 419-578-6783.
- April 23, 6-9 p.m., in OSU Extension’s Montgomery County office, 1001 South Main St., Dayton, directly across from Miami Valley Hospital. Registration is $10. For details and to register, contact Suzanne Mills-Wasniak, 937-224-9654, ext. 109; or mills-wasniak.1@osu.edu.
- April 25, 12:30-3:30 p.m., at Mill Creek MetroParks Farm, 7574 Columbiana-Canfield Road, Canfield. Registration is $10. For details and to register, call Eric Barrett in OSU Extension’s Mahoning County office, 330-533-5538.
Details about all three workshops and future offerings are online at http://producesafety.osu.edu/events.
The registration fee for the workshops has been reduced through a grant from the Ohio Department of Agriculture’s (ODA) Specialty Crop Program.
FDA is holding a listening session for growers on the proposed new safety rules on April 30 in the Shisler Conference Center at Ohio State’s Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC), 1680 Madison Ave., Wooster. Admission is free, but registration is requested. The registration form is online at ODA’s Food Safety Web page, http://bit.ly/FDAmtg.
OSU Extension and OARDC are CFAES’s outreach and research arms, respectively.
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