May 22, 2025

Good day PSA Newsletter subscribers!

As summer quickly approaches, the PSA Team wanted to share some updates. The PSA recently held our annual in-person meeting in Geneva, NY. This meeting allowed the team to come together and work on many upcoming and ongoing projects, including the development of the V2 PSA GT curriculum. The week was filled with long days but was a time to re-energize as a team. In this newsletter, you will see additional pieces of the team's progress, reminders of current compliance dates of the PSR and FSMA 204, dates for upcoming training and webinars, a survey, and some additional team updates. The PSA is excited as we are approaching a few more in-person meetings allowing us to continue collaboration with all our produce safety partners.   

Sincerely, 

The PSA Team 

Celebrate World Food Safety Day with the PSA!

We’re celebrating World Food Safety Day on Friday, June 6th by sharing helpful tips, videos, and insightful content on our social media channels, all focused on produce safety and how far the industry has come.

Have a question about produce safety?

We’d love to hear from you! Click the button below to submit your question, and we might answer it on June 6^th:

Be sure to follow us on social media to learn more about the steps growers, trainers, and educators are taking to keep our food safe:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/producesafetyalliance/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ProduceSafetyAlliance

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/produce-safety-alliance/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@producesafetyalliance2335

Compliance Dates Arrived: FSMA Produce Safety Rule Pre-Harvest Agricultural Water

The first compliance date for FSMA PSR pre-harvest water requirements, including the agricultural water assessment, arrived on April 07, 2025, for the largest farm size class. As with the 2015 Final Produce Safety Rule, compliance dates are staggered by business size class. The compliance date for farms selling up to $250,000 to $500,000 produce per year (3-year rolling average, not adjusted for inflation) is April 06, 2026, and the compliance date for the smallest category of covered farm is April 05, 2027. The PSA Team continues to offer update webinars about pre-harvest agricultural water (see below) as well as to create and update water-related resources to support management practices for pre-harvest agricultural water. 

Remember the compliance dates for requirements dealing with postharvest water requirements, including testing untreated ground water for generic E. coli are all in effect, with compliance for the smallest covered farms beginning on January 26, 2025. All farms covered by the FSMA Produce Safety Rule should be managing their postharvest water to meet requirements in Subpart E. Check out the PSA website for resources to help with postharvest water management.

The agricultural water systems inspection must be done for all uses of agricultural water once the compliance dates (different for pre-harvest and postharvest uses) arrive.

The PSA Team created a fact sheet to help describe the different requirements:

• English:https://resources.producesafetyalliance.cornell.edu/documents/AGWA-FSMA-PSR-Agricultural-Water-System-Inspection-is-Different.pdf
• Spanish: https://cornell.box.com/s/n6t0p4zki9am5ob6gicsxcm43yq9780m

The required records document has also been updated with the necessary templates:

• English:https://resources.producesafetyalliance.cornell.edu/documents/Records-Required-by-the-FSMA-PSR.pdf
• Spanish: https://cornell.box.com/s/mmktkumlr60ecqk9nukpme1ksifffneu

Compliance Dates Postponed: FSMA 204 (Food Traceability Rule)

On March 20, 2025, FDA announced that the compliance date for the FSMA Food Traceability Rule would be postponed for 30 months. The new compliance date is expected to be July 20, 2028. You can read more about this decision at the FDA web site here: https://www.fda.gov/food/hfp-constituent-updates/fda-intends-extend-compliance-date-food-traceability-rule

The PSA Supplemental Slides for FSMA Traceability Rule were updated April 01, 2025 to reflect the new compliance date:

• English: https://resources.producesafetyalliance.cornell.edu/documents/psa-traceability-rule-supplemental-slides.pptx
• Spanish: https://cornell.box.com/s/8z3vzsm7xt3o7bdu4rkwacq8u4b3zmws

FSMA Produce Safety Rule Pre-Harvest Agricultural Water Update Webinars and On-Demand Options

Webinars

Beginning in December 2024, the Produce Safety Alliance (PSA) has been hosting webinars on the revised requirements for Pre-Harvest Agricultural Water (Subpart E) in the FSMA Produce Safety Rule in English and Spanish to ensure past PSA Grower Training (GT) and PSA Train-the-Trainer (TTT) participants understand the new pre-harvest agricultural water requirements. Due to demand, additional webinars have been scheduled through August 2025. 

Each webinar contains similar information, so you only need to attend one webinar to get the new information. 

Each two-hour webinar includes a presentation of the new requirements and compliance dates, and a discussion of new or revised PSA resources. There is time to answer questions, both submitted before the webinar and those that arise during the webinar. Registration is required; there is no cost to attend. Registration for each webinar is limited to the first 500 registrants. A certificate of completion is emailed to webinar participants who attend one full session.

Please make note of your Grower ID / Trainer ID because it is required for webinar registration. This ID is unique to you; please do not share it with others. Emails were sent to all past PSA GT participants on November 7, 2024 and January 23, 2025 and to past PSA TTT participants on January 23, 2025. Check your email on these dates because this email is personalized to each recipient and contains your individual Grower ID or Trainer ID. 

To find registration links, please refer to the email you received on 01/23/2025. 

On-Demand Options

The PSA has created an English and Spanish On-Demand Video option for those that would like to get the Revised Subpart E information right away at their convenience. Please visit the PSA Website to view the recorded video in English or Spanish. A certificate of completion is emailed to participants that view the entire session and fill out the Qualtrics link.

Upcoming PSA Trainings

Remote PSA Train-the-Trainer Courses:

The last Train-the-Trainer course scheduled in the current funding cycle (ending August 31, 2025) is full to capacity. Please stay tuned as future Train-the-Trainer courses become available.

Online Grower Training Courses:

Team Updates

The PSA Team continues to participate in the national dialogue about produce safety. Recent events have impacted us as they have many of our colleagues, but we continue daily to commit our efforts to productive collaborations and efforts focused on supporting fresh produce growers. The following are some of our important efforts and interactions. 

After nearly 10 successful years using the original and updated Version 1 of the PSA Grower Training Curriculum, we are engaged in a full Version 2 update. Thanks to all the PSA Active Trainers who took our survey and provided input for changes they would like to see in V2.

The PSA was represented at the NASDA Produce Safety Consortium (March 18-20, 2025) in Ft Worth, Texas. Betsy Bihn and Don Stoeckel shared updates on PSA activities with over 100 attendees at the Produce Safety Consortium. We also heard about the good work others are doing to support the produce supply chain. We appreciated all the great discussions and opportunities to connect and collaborate.

Several PSA Team members, Davis Blasini, Betsy Bihn, Donna Clements, and Don Stoeckel, were actively engaged in committees of the Reagan Udall Foundation for the FDA’s Produce Safety Stakeholder Dialogue. The full report from this effort is expected to be released soon.

Betsy Bihn was a featured speaker at the Hartnell Western Food Safety conference May 07-08, 2025 in Salinas, California. The title of her talk was The Gravitational Pull of Produce Safety: Its Importance to Health, Farm Viability, and Market Access. This conference was attended by hundreds of producers from California’s Central Coast. 

Webinar

Educators' Email List:

Reminder: If you are a PSA Trainer, extension educator, or produce safety leader in your community, please sign up for the Educator Email List. There are a lot of new resources related to Subpart E and other relevant topics that will be discussed in the upcoming months!