ANNAPOLIS, MD (March 31, 2011) \u2013 On April 7, the Maryland Department of Agriculture (MDA) and the University of Maryland in partnership with Future Harvest CASA (FHCASA) will conduct food safety training for fruit and vegetable producers.\u00a0 This one-day workshop is important for producers who want to understand how to meet current and future U.S. Food and Drug Administration food safety requirements through the voluntary Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) certification program. The training will also provide assistance in implementing a GAP program.<\/p>\n
Topics to be covered include:\u00a0 basics of GAP; addressing water quality issues; and MDA\/University of Maryland programs to assist producers in implementing GAP.\u00a0 Click\u00a0here<\/a>for the program brochure.<\/p>\n Training will be held at the Baltimore County Center for Maryland Agriculture, 1114 Shawan Rd, Cockeysville, MD 21030, from 2:30 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. on April 7, 2011. The training fee is $15 for members of FHCASA and $20 for nonmembers, which includes dinner and materials. The registration is available online at http:\/\/events.r20.constantcontact.com\/register\/event?llr=8ygezafab&oeidk=a07e3lbcl9l5e72fa43 MDA is offering two GAP programs for fruit and vegetable producers.\u00a0\u00a0 To meet the requirements of buyers for GAP certification, the farm or business must complete a successful audit of its operation conducted by MDA\u2019s Food Quality Assurance Program to determine compliance with Good Agricultural Practices. The program is conducted through a cooperative agreement with USDA Agricultural Marketing Service. The audit provides national recognition for producers to the many buyers now requiring audits for compliance to the GAP guidelines.\u00a0 MDA\u2019s Food Quality Assurance Program is also offering a GAP program geared towards producers not required to have certification by their buyers.\u00a0 This program is to assist producers selling directly to consumers or in other ways not required by a buyer to have an audit for compliance with GAP implementation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ANNAPOLIS, MD (March 31, 2011) \u2013 On April 7, the Maryland Department of Agriculture (MDA) and the University of Maryland in partnership with Future Harvest CASA (FHCASA) will conduct food safety training for fruit and vegetable producers.\u00a0 This one-day workshop is important for producers who want to understand how to meet current and future U.S. Read the Rest…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[143,205],"class_list":["post-871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-release","tag-food-safety","tag-producers"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":872,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions\/872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nor call Alice Chalmers at 410-549-7878, email: events@futureharvestcasa.org.<\/p>\n