Comment Period Open for Leafy Greens

In April, USDA announced it is looking for comments on the creation of a voluntary National Leafy Green Marketing Agreement (NLGMA). This comes on the heels of FDA making public its first new rules under the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).

Scott Horsfall, Chief Executive Officer at the California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement (CLMGA) says USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service has indicated that FDA rules under the FSMA may be incorporated into the NLGMA, “but it remains to be seen how that will all work out.”

Horsfall says it will be interesting to see how the leafy greens agreement will work at the national level, especially when it comes to zoning. To reflect the different climates, production practices, and markets handling leafy green produce, USDA is proposing that there be eight regional zones represented on the board.

“I think in the original proposal, those zones were not designed to reflect growing regions,” he says. They were designed to create some administrative zones. In California, we have zones for the purpose of electing membership on the board. Grouping those zones by growing conditions wasn’t our thinking here so I don’t know how that will play out nationally.”

It may seem like these rules from FDA and the NLGMA are coming all at once but Horsfall says it will take time to define all the rules and then implement them. In the meantime, he says the CLGMA will continue to do what it has done for the last four years. “We will work with our industry to verify that our members are implementing food safety practices and changing the culture of food safety on the farm,” he says.

For more information on food safety, go to www.growingproduce.com/foodsafety.