Advantage Good Agricultural Practices Manual

Identifying Your Risks

A worksheet titled "What Applies to My Farm?" is supplied at the beginning of this section. This worksheet will assist you in keeping track of which good agricultural practices apply to your operation, which written practices and records are required, and which training needs should be addressed.

To help identify what applies to your farm, each good agricultural practice is associated with a risk identification flow chart that takes you through a series of yes/no questions. Each question will alert you to potential food safety risks on your farm. It requires that you pay close attention to all your farm's activities and all the areas where food is produced, handled, stored and shipped.

Depending on how you answer the question, the flow chart will either:

• Tell you what your risk is
• Direct you to the next question (this means that you already deal with that risk appropriately)

Answering the first question in each flow chart will help you figure out if the good agricultural practice applies to you. If it doesn't apply to you, move on to the next risk identification flow chart. If it does apply, check off the first column on the "What Applies to My Farm?" worksheet. The "Written practices needed" and "Records to keep" columns on the worksheet can be completed by reading the corresponding practice. If you have workers responsible for this practice, check off the "Training needed" column.

Begin the risk identification series of flow charts