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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Process Controls

This is a model/ example food safety plan built to align with the Preventive Controls Rule Food Safety Plan requirements.  Each operation needs to assess their individual risks to determine which preventive controls apply to them.

Frozen Blueberries: Food Safety Plan teaching example

Survival of Listeria monocytogenes on Fresh Blueberries (Vaccinium corymbosum) Stored under Controlled Atmosphere and Ozone

The aim of this work was to study the survival of L. monocytogenes in fresh highbush blueberries stored at 4 or 12uC under different controlled atmosphere conditions, including air (control); 5% O2, 15% CO2, 80% N2 (controlled atmosphere storage [CAS]); or ozone gas (O3), 4 ppm at 4uC or 2.5 ppm at 12uC, at high relative humidity (90 to 95%) for a total of 10 days.

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