The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) final rule on agricultural water was enacted on July 5, 2024. To explain the rule’s technical aspects and practical interpretation for Hispanic farmers, the International Fresh Produce Association (IFPA) will host a webinar in Spanish on August 28.
Jorge Quintanilla, IFPA food safety specialist, will moderate the one-and-a-half-hour webinar (2 pm to 3:30 pm Eastern Time).
In an interview with Abasto Media, Quintanilla highlighted that this webinar is presented in Spanish because the Hispanic agricultural community must know and understand the new standard and use it to keep their crops safe.
Dr. Yulie Meneses of the Produce Safety Alliance and Dr. Oscar Galagarza of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are the panelists for the Spanish webinar.
“There is a need to transmit this information to the Spanish-speaking community because it is not the same to have someone speak to you in English and offer you an interpretation in Spanish as it is to have them speak your own language. That’s why we said, what better way to reach the Spanish-speaking community than to do a webinar in Spanish on a topic as important as agricultural water safety,” said Quintanilla.
According to the most recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), between 2020 and 2022, there were 59 outbreaks of fresh produce contamination in the U.S. As a result, nearly 4,000 people got sick, 685 were hospitalized, and nine died.
The final FSMA rule, which went into effect at the end of July, replaced the old microbial quality criteria and pre-harvest testing requirements for agricultural water with new requirements based on hazard identification and risk management decision-making systems for evaluating water used in agriculture.
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“When the FDA initially published this rule in 2015, the agricultural water use part of the rule was quite complex. With this new final rule, what FDA did was rewrite and change the original approach, directing the emphasis around risk management, to looking at and understanding water as a system within the farm and how water interacts with different factors,” Quintanilla explained.
The IFPA food safety and regulatory expert noted that the FDA has set a two-year deadline for small and medium-sized farmers to implement the changes needed to comply with the new requirements and safely sell their fresh produce to supermarkets.
Attendees of the Spanish-language webinar will have the opportunity to learn the details of the FSMA final rule, ask questions of the two panelists, and share their experiences with other participants.
“I also invited two industry experts who have complied with the rule to discuss the best practices to start complying with the new requirements and what they have done to adjust to the new rules,” said Quintanilla.
In addition, the Q&A section at the end of the Spanish webinar will feature Kruti Ravaliya from the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, who will answer questions on the more technical side of FSMA’s final rule on the use of agricultural water.
“From Latin to Latin, I invite you to participate in this webinar, be part of this change, and understand more easily what this new rule entails because it offers many benefits to understanding the systems and how they interact,” concluded Quintanilla.
Click this link to register and participate for free in IFPA’s Spanish webinar.