The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) and the Monterey County Farm Bureau are joining together to announce the release of “California Agricultural Neighbors: neighbor-to-neighbor best practices to help enhance localized food safety efforts.”
California Agricultural Neighbors (CAN) was formed in January 2021 to bring together members of the Salinas Valley agriculture community to review what could be done to help reduce outbreaks of pathogenic Escherichia coli (E. coli) O157:H7 associated with leafy greens.
CAN provided a roundtable opportunity to foster collaboration and discuss enhanced food safety practices between neighboring farms when various agricultural operations are adjacent to one another, including leafy greens, cattle ranches, vineyards, and compost sites.
CAN membership includes representatives from agriculture production as well as various industry and consumer associations, academia, and government.
Actions for enhanced food safety outlined in the report include:
- Foster Neighbor-to-Neighbor Interactions and Conversations
- Build a Research Roadmap for the Salinas Valley
- Create a Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment (QMRA) Framework
- Build and Maintain Capacity to Transfer Knowledge from Research into Applied Practice
Click here to view “California Agricultural Neighbors: Neighbor-to-neighbor best practices to help enhance localized food safety efforts.”
Click here to view a one-page flyer of the food safety actions outlined in the report.