WSDA Customer Service Evolves

WSDA Customer Service Evolves

More and more farmers and food processing companies are doing business using computers and virtual documents. To improve customer service Washington State Department of Agriculture programs are being updated to utilize e-mail, web-based fillable forms and the ability to create and store virtual documents. WSDA’s Mike Louisell talks about improvements made in WSDA’s food safety program that will expedite the process for producers who are exporting Washington foods.

LOUISELL: A sanitary export certificate is required by many of our foreign trading partners. They want assurance that the food products are being processed, made, created in food facilities that have been inspected. Until the end of last year it was pretty much a paper based process. But now we have our export certificate online, and our customers can fill out and email it to us. We can process this document much quicker than through the old style of doing business.

Improvements are also coming to WSDA’s Animal Health Program. There are roughly 21 thousand certificates of veterinary inspections reviewed and filed each year for livestock movements that leave Washington state, and 15 thousand additional CVIs of livestock coming into the state. Starting the end of July export CVIs will be handled online in a pilot program. Animal Health staff is expected to provide export CVIs via e-mail to all states by September.

I’m Lacy Gray and that’s Washington Ag Today on the Northwest Ag Information Network.  

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