By Heidi Parsons, Food Safety Magazine
The NPC recently released its Commodity-Specific Food Safety Guidelines for the Production, Harvest, Storage, and Packing of Potatoes and will host a media briefing about the document on Friday, Nov. 8, in a 30-minute webinar from noon to 12:30 p.m. ET.
Developed for industry members "to help ensure the continued safety of U.S.-grown potatoes," according to the NPC, the document is available here.
This document offers food safety guidance for all companies that produce, harvest, store, pack and transport potatoes. It also serves as a basic guideline to harmonize all existing food safety programs in how they assess and address food safety hazards. The guidelines are broken down into four sections: I) General Practices, II) Production and Harvest Operations, III) Storage Unit Operations and IV) Packinghouse Unit Operations. Each section lists a set of best practices to address potential food safety issues associated with those specific operations.