CDFA and the Monterey County Farm Bureau are announcing the joint release of the report "California Agricultural Neighbors: Building a Proactive Food Safety Culture."

California Agricultural Neighbors (CAN) was formed in January 2021 to bring together members of the Salinas Valley agriculture community to review what could be done to help reduce outbreaks of pathogenic Escherichia coli (E. coli) O157:H7 associated with leafy greens.

CAN initially facilitated discussions to enhance food safety practices between neighboring farms when various agricultural operations are adjacent to one another. An Action Report released in 2022 touched on neighbor-to-neighbor best practices.

Four work groups then focused on those practices to develop the new report, which offers next steps to continue to build a proactive food safety culture:

• Communication to broaden engagement that is supportive of a proactive food safety culture
• Expanded research partnerships and leveraging data science to fill information gaps essential for more effective action
• Engagement of additional partners and collaborators, including the California Longitudinal Study, a joint effort between CDFA and the FDA, to accelerate translation of new information to action.
• Investing in the future expertise and capacity to enhance transfer of knowledge from research into applied practice

Click here to view "California Agricultural Neighbors: Building a Proactive Food Safety Culture."

Click here to view a flyer about the report and its Next Steps.