GRAS2P Education

GRAS2P Education. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Tree fruit growers are aware of all sorts of regulations and one of the newest is something called, GRAS2P spelled G,R,A,S, the number 2 and P. Nicole Brunner with the Washington State Horticultural Association discusses what the GRAS2P program is.

BRUNNER: GRAS2P stands for growers response to agricultural safe and sustainable practices. It’s grower based and grower friendly. It provides solutions that assure safe and sustainable practices. Our program assists the grower in gaining certifications for either their global GAP audit or USDA GAP audit.

GAP stands for good agricultural practices. She says their goal is to have a shelf ready guidance manual to get the grower ready for their actual audit.

BRUNNER: Back in January, Obama passed the Food Safety Modernization act, also in November Wal-Mart came out with a letter stating that they would only be accepting fruits and vegetables from farms that have gone through an on-farm certification process.

Due to those two things Brunner says there has been a push for on-farm audits.

BRUNNER: It was like deer looking in the headlights, what do we do next? And so they turned to the Hort because here we had the shelf ready guidance manual to help the growers get ready for their actual audits.

Tomorrow we talk with Brunner about their education classes and new training materials.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.