GRAS2P Update
GRAS2P Update. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report.
Growers response to agricultural safe and sustainable practices or GRAS2P has undergone a few changes and Ben Marchant, VP of Marketing with BSI recently spent some time talking about those updates.
MARCHANT: A few changes in this, not a huge amount. There's about 5 or 6 in the criteria total. There was also some changes in the general regulations. It didn't really affect many of the option one individual audits for Global GAP.
GRAS2P and Global GAP work together to make sure ag producers are audit ready when it comes to food safety preparedness, food traceability and good agricultural practices. Making your way through these programs can be a bit daunting. One change Marchant says is in interpretation.
MARCHANT: For those of you that are in a group certification a change in the U.S. national interpretation guideline and what that means is every country actually has the right under Global GAP to have an interpretation guideline, basically an exception to the rules. So if something is a general best practice in one country and not others, well Global GAP recognizes that you may be able to make an exception for the sake of the industry in that specific country. So here in the U.S. we made the exception that internal inspectors do not needs to have a degree anymore. They can substitute that for experience.
If you need more information on the updates be sure and contact the Washington State Hort.
That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.
