Farm Food Safety Training with GAPs

April 3 - April 4, 2012


Cornell Cooperative Extension, the Cornell Vegetable Program, the Lake Ontario Fruit Team, the Cornell National GAPs Program, and the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets will be running the final Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) training before the 2012 growing season. This is for those farmers who are being required by buyers to provide third party verification of their food safety practices and for farmers thinking about moving in this direction, with Federal Food Safety Legislation a reality in the very near future. The workshops are being partially funded by a grant from the Genesee Valley Regional Marketing Authority, along with Smith-Lever grant "Creating a comprehensive state-wide GAPs food safety education program". In addition, funding to support the participation of NYS Department of Agriculture and Markets Auditors and the distribution of GAPs educational materials comes from a Specialty Crop Block Grant to NYS from the USDA.

The first day will focus on the details of what GAPs is, how it works, and what it means for your farming operation. The second day will be devoted to helping you write a food safety plan as required for audit certification or if you just want to have one for yourself to implement on your farm. A laptop computer is required for the second day. If you need to borrow one, please let us know ahead of time (check off on registration form below) so we can have one available. In addition, if you have a person or two from your farm who has better computer skills, you can bring them one or both days. It is strongly recommended that you attend day 1 in order to begin writing your food safely plan on day 2.

GAPs Training Information (PDF; 294KB)