BerrySmart
Food Safety

BerrySmart Food Safety promotes blueberry industry-standard food safety practices.

Food safety is a shared priority across the blueberry industry. This resource center provides growers, handlers and industry partners with easy access to tools, guidance and educational materials on key food safety topics, including agricultural water, sanitation, worker hygiene, traceability, audits and regulations.

Use the search bar or browse by topic to find resources that support safe, practical and responsible food safety practices.

PATHOGENS 101 Bacteria Parasites Virus PERSONAL HYGIENE AGRICULTURAL WATER PESTICIDES PROCESS CONTROLS
SANITATION Basics of sanitation In field/Harvesting Packing TESTING TRACEABILITY ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS RECALLS & OUTBREAKS
REGULATIONS & REGULATORY GENERAL RESOURCES GAPS / AUDITS USDA GRADE STANDARDS
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GAPs / Audits

Information and documents on two standards used for USDA Harmonized GAP audits are the “Field Operations and Harvesting Harmonized Food Safety Standard” and the “Post-harvest Operations Harmonized Food Safety Standard.”

USDA GAP/HGAP

This document represents generally accepted, broad-based agricultural guidance, developed from current knowledge of food safety practices of FDA, USDA, and others. By identifying basic principles of food safety in blueberries from growing to processing, users of this guide will be better prepared to address elements of food safety concerns and will be better prepared for third party audits

Good Agricultural Practices for Food Safety in Blueberry Production: Basic Principles

Good Agricultural Practices for the Production and Handling of Strawberry, Raspberry, Blackberry, and Blueberry (Sept 2002)

Document highlighting the basics of maintaining good sanitation and good agricultural practices throughout production and handling of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries.

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Good Agricultural and Manufacturing (Handling) Safety and Food Defense Practices as Part of Fresh Blueberry Farming, Packing and Distribution

This 2010 North American Blueberry Commission document precedes the implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act and Produce Safety Rule and was adapted from a Michigan State University document.

GAPs Basic Principles (caff.org)

Primus Labs’ online audit version for the field, packing house, greenhouse and cold storage self-audit is now available. We encourage you to try this most convenient of all methods for using our self-audits. As an online submission, it is also no cost to the user. We will score it, benchmark against other audits, develop a corrective measures response, and return it to you via e-mail!

Primus Self Auditing

Building manuals that have detailed policies, standard operating procedures, forms and risk assessments is an important part of any company’s food safety and QA program but can be very time consuming. The Primus Labs toolkit is designed to help start off your company’s program by providing simple generic pre-made documents ready for your company to edit and adapt for your company’s often unique requirements.

Primus Tool Kit