United States Department of Agriculture
Agricultural Marketing Service Fruit and Vegetable Programs
Fresh Products Branch
Good Agricultural Practices and Good Handling Practices Audit Verification Program
Policy and Instructions
November 2009
Audit Instructions for GAP & GHP
These audit instructions are specifically developed and designed by the Fresh Products Branch to assist officially licensed auditors in the interpretation and application of the Good Agricultural Practices & Good Handling Practices Audit Verification Program. These instructions do not specifically address the commodity specific audit checklists developed by the Fresh Products Branch. Additional training and instruction is required for commodity specific audits. These instructions do not establish any substantial rule not legally authorized by official Branch Policy. This publication supersedes any previously issued auditing instructions. If any questions arise that need further clarification, please contact your Federal Program Manager or the Audit Program Coordinator in Washington DC.
November 2009
****This publication may be not duplicated without authorization from USDA. ****
This handbook replaces instructions dated August 2007
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Good Agricultural and Good Handling Practices Audit Verification Program
In October 1998, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Food and Drug Administration jointly issued a guidance document for the fresh fruit and vegetable industry that provided general guidelines for reducing the possibility of contamination of fresh produce by microbial organisms. The document,
“Guide to Minimize Microbial Food Safety Hazards for Fresh Fruits and Vegetables,”
provides discussion about high risk areas for contamination and how to avoid or reduce the possibility of such contamination. Shortly thereafter, many wholesale produce companies began requesting their suppliers to provide assurance that the supplier was following Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and Good Handling Practices (GHP) that the document recommended. As a result of requests from shippers and growers in various States to provide some type of service to satisfy the wholesalers’ needs, the Association of Fruit and Vegetable Inspection and Standardization Agencies (AFVISA) began investigating the possibility of providing a national audit service in cooperation with USDA to satisfy the shippers and growers needs. In August 2001, USDA approved the program and a draft auditor checklist. In January 2002, the USDA implemented the GAP&GHP audit verification program. Additional information and a copy of the current checklist may be found at www.ams.usda.gov/gapghp. This program is an audit based service. It is provided in order to assess a company’s efforts to minimize the possibility of contamination of fresh fruits, vegetables and nuts by microbial pathogens. It does not assure that the product is free from microbial contamination. Audits are intended to occur on a scheduled basis at a minimum of once a year. The responsibility for continuing product safety and the continued observance of practices leading to a minimized possibility of microbial contamination rests with the company. These instructions are specifically developed by the Fresh Products Branch to assist officially authorized auditors in the application of auditing principles and practices, the use of an official checklist and define GAP&GHP terms in order to conduct audits for GAP&GHP program compliance. These instructions do not establish any rule or regulation. The mission of the program and the intent of these instructions are to provide a uniformly applied national auditing program for the U.S. fresh produce industry for purposes of verification with GAP&GHP.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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