GroupGAP

Consumer demand for locally sourced food is increasing and creating excellent marketing opportunities for the specialty crops industry. Unfortunately, there are often obstacles to bringing fresh, local foods into larger retail markets. Many farmers, and especially small and mid-sized producers, have encountered challenges demonstrating compliance with food safety standards and the requirements of retail, institutional, and other buyers—until now.

On April 3, 2016 the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) introduced “GroupGAP”—a new food safety certification program designed to increase opportunities for the entire specialty crops industry to supply and buy USDA good agricultural practices (GAP)-certified produce.

Many producers rely on USDA GAP certification to verify their operations are following industry-recognized food safety practices and the recommendations of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Until now, becoming USDA GAP-certified had been too time consuming and costly for small growing operations.

The GroupGAP audit program from AMS will alleviate these concerns. This new program makes USDA GAP certification accessible and affordable for all growers. Under the GroupGAP program, growers of any size, as well as established grower groups including food hubs and other marketing organizations, and even research and promotion programs, can be USDA GAP-certified as a group. While a three-year pilot program focused on smaller producers, the GroupGAP concept is applicable to all growers, regardless of size or market.

For purposes of the GroupGAP Program, any group of producers and/or supply chain partners who come together to implement a shared food safety program can be considered a group. Group members share resources and work together under a common Quality Management System to meet the requirements of both the USDA GAP program and their buyers.

In addition to determining its own composition, the group also decides which commodities are covered by the certification. And, groups can choose to certify against any current USDA GAP standard audit, including GAP-GHP (good handling practices), Harmonized Produce GAP, or Mushroom GAP, and may include additional scopes such as food defense or the Global Markets Addendum.

In addition, AMS is working with the FDA to ensure all of its audit programs align, at a minimum, with the on-farm food safety requirements of the FDA’s new Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). In some cases, the USDA GAP requirements may be more stringent than those of FSMA since GAP programs also take into consideration industry best practices and buyer requirements.

A GroupGAP certification requires two layers of audits: the first is internal production site audits of all group members conducted by the group’s own internal auditor. The second layer consists of the formal GroupGAP system audit conducted by the USDA. The latter focuses primarily on the group as a whole—to determine if it has fully implemented its own Quality Management System, conducted the internal audits, and taken corrective actions on any nonconformance.

Onsite audits are conducted by the USDA, at a randomly selected percentage of growers. At a minimum, AMS will look at the square root of the number of growers, so for a 164 grower group, there would be a minimum of 13 growers as part of the annual system audit.