Mission Creep: What to Do When Legal Requirements that DON’T Apply to Potatoes Become Buyer Requirements that DO!

Mission Creep: What to Do When Legal Requirements that DON’T Apply to Potatoes Become Buyer Requirements that DO!

Many federal regulations that apply to vegetables that are eaten raw do not apply to potatoes. On the face of it, that can be a good thing. The problem is that those pesky food safety audits (aka. Primus and GAPs) often make these laws a part of their requirements, despite whether they apply to you or not. This talk will walk through three requirements that legally don’t apply to potatoes, but that potato growers will likely need to implement through buyer requirements.
 

Wednesday, January 29
11:15am-12:00pm

Cheboygan Room

Register for Winter Potato Conference

About the Speaker

 

Phil Tocco

Phil Tocco has served as Extension Educator with Michigan State University since 2004. He serves as an educator in on-farm produce safety for fruit and vegetable farmers statewide. He has provided leadership and coordination of statewide programming in on-farm food safety since 2009.  He currently serves with several other educators, State Departments of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to implement and train assessors on the On-Farm Readiness Review, a tool to help growers determine their level of readiness for FSMA inspection.

Phil has a master's in plant protection and pest management from the University of California-Davis and a bachelor's in biology from Western Michigan University. He has training in field crop, vegetable and fruit production, with some experience in all three. He lives in Jackson with his wife and three children.