In an effort facilitated by Western Growers Association, members of the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement are nearing completion on a new set of standards for the application of surface water on leafy greens within several weeks of their harvest.
“I anticipate that within about four to six weeks, we will have new standards in place,” Scott Horsfall, chief executive officer of the California LGMA, said Thursday, March 28.
He noted that industry representatives are currently meeting and afinalizing the new metrics. That process is in its concluding stages, but Hank Giclas, senior vice president of science and technology for Western Growers, said once the final draft is completed it will go through a final vetting process as well as through a notification timeline before it is officially adopted.
While LGMA has a seat at that table, Horsfall said the organization’s role is to implement those standards once they have been finalized.
Surface water, applied either in-line or especially via overhead sprinkler in the final weeks before harvest, has been identified as a potential problem area with regard to food-safety concerns. Industry members say that while there is not “smoking-gun” proof that the surface water has caused the Romaine contamination issues of the past year, the preponderance of the evidence does point to untreated surface water as a meaningful risk factor.
In separate interviews, both Giclas and Horsfall said it is clear that surface water application in the two to three weeks leading up to harvest must be looked at differently than irrigation applications earlier in the growing cycle. The new standards most certainly will call for the use of treated water for a specific time period prior to harvest.
“We are working toward prescriptive standards,” said Giclas, meaning the regulations will be quite specific.
The Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement is a voluntary agreement that was established in 2006 in the aftermath of the E. coli crisis related to spinach. Signers of the agreement, which include virtually all commercial growers of leafy greens acreage in California and Arizona, must follow the standards established by the industry. There are separate LGMAs for California and Arizona, but they basically have the same set of standards in place.
On March 26, Taylor Farms in Salinas, CA, a leading grower of leafy greens, announced that effective May 1, it will require the growers of its leafy greens to use only treated open source water in overhead irrigation. This is basically the same issue that the industry at large is working on.
The Taylor announcement does put a definitive date on its implementation of the new standards, which are in line with LGMA’s expectations for the industry.
Horsfall said published reports that implementation may not occur until mid-July are inaccurate. Using his four- to six-week anticipated time frame would mean implementation no later than around May 10 and possibly sooner. Giclas concurred on the time frame.
