Elisabeth Hodgdon, CCE ENYCHP & Craig Kahlke, CCE LOFP  

Is your farm ready for a FSMA Produce Safety Rule inspection? As the growing season begins, the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets is booking inspections and educational On-Farm Readiness Reviews (OFRRs) around the state to see farm activities in action. For the third year in a row, all farms covered by the Produce Safety Rule are eligible for inspection. Inspections of farms following qualified exempt requirements will be scheduled at a later time to be determined. Routine inspections (second inspections) will be scheduled for all farms on a risk-based priority and as schedules allow in 2023.  

Farms of all sizes and exemption statuses are eligible to sign up for an OFRR this season. An OFRR is a free, confidential educational visit to the farm by a NYSDAM representative and CCE educator. The visit includes a walk around the farm to observe activities while having a conversation regarding food safety practices. At the end of the visit, no notes or photos are taken off the farm. The farm is provided with guidance and resources to improve food safety prior to an official inspection; the OFRR itself is not an inspection. If you’d like to learn more and/or sign up for an OFRR, contact Steve Schirmer at (315) 487–0852 or steve.schirmer@agriculture.ny.gov. 

Still unsure whether your farm is fully covered, exempt, or qualified exempt? A good place to start is to take a look at your farm’s sales figures and use the “Coverage and Exemptions/Exclusions Flow Chart” on the FDA’s Produce Safety Rule website to see where your farm falls. Very small farms selling less than $25,000 worth of fresh produce are fully exempt. Farms selling less than $500,000 of food (combined produce, baked goods, milk, meat, hay and animal feed, etc.) are eligible for a qualified exemption based on the type of sales. These sales figures are adjusted for inflation and are currently $30,509 and $610,182, respectively, for average sales during 2020-2022. 

For those who are familiar with the Produce Safety Rule and have taken the Produce Safety Alliance (PSA) Grower Training Course, you may recall that the water and soil amendment subparts of the Produce Safety Rule are subject to change. No updates regarding the soil rules have been released, but a proposed revision to subpart E, the water rule, was issued in December 2021. The revision has not yet been finalized. If adopted, the revised rule would replace pre-harvest water testing requirements with regular water quality assessments. Growers may opt to continue testing their pre-harvest water to assess its quality. Postharvest water testing requirements remain the same. To read more about the proposed revisions to subpart E, read the FDA’s overview here. Once the pre-harvest water portion of subpart E is finalized, large farms will need to comply within 9 months, small farms within 1 year and 9 months, and very small farms within 2 years and 9 months.  Enforcement discretion for harvest and post-harvest agricultural water has ended and compliance dates will be phased in by farm size, beginning with large farms as of January 2023. 

Lastly, if you still have not taken a PSA Grower Training Course, consider doing so before your inspection. You can browse upcoming courses on the PSA website. In addition to in-person and “live” remote (Zoom) courses, the PSA offers an online course that is self-paced rather than real-time instruction. The self-paced nature of the course may be a good fit for producers during the growing season, since it allows one to work through the material according to their own schedule within a set timeframe.