Ja­maica's Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries will em­bark on a na­tion­al food safe­ty com­pli­ance pi­lot project for the ex­port mar­ket to im­prove the safe­ty of fresh pro­duce be­ing ex­port­ed to the Unit­ed States as well as those con­sumed in Ja­maica. The ini­tia­tive will see the train­ing of some 3,600 farm­ers in Good Agri­cul­tur­al Prac­tices (GAPs) and safe and ef­fec­tive use of pes­ti­cides be­gin­ning this month. It is part of ef­forts by the gov­ern­ment to en­sure com­pli­ance with the Unit­ed States Food Safe­ty Mod­erni­sa­tion Act (FS­MA).

Speak­ing at a press brief­ing at the Min­istry's Hope Gar­dens of­fices in St An­drew on Sep­tem­ber 12, Port­fo­lio Min­is­ter Roger Clarke said every ef­fort must be made to con­form with the leg­is­la­tion to pre­vent any fall out in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor and, by ex­ten­sion, the econ­o­my. He said the US rep­re­sents one of the coun­try's ma­jor mar­kets, with ex­ports of yam, hot pep­per, ac­k­ee and callaloo amount­ing to US$22.4 mil­lion in 2010.

As part of the mea­sures to en­sure com­pli­ance, an­oth­er pi­lot pro­gramme in­volv­ing 200 farm­ers and 20 fresh pro­duce ex­porters will al­so be im­ple­ment­ed. They will be trained in FS­MA sen­si­ti­sa­tion-GAPs; per­son­al hy­giene and food safe­ty, (with the pro­vi­sion of food han­dlers' per­mits); and safe and ef­fec­tive use of pes­ti­cides.

He said un­der the project, the com­pe­ten­cies of the Min­istry and Rur­al Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (RA­DA) of­fi­cers will be up­grad­ed un­der the Joint In­sti­tute for Food Safe­ty Ap­plied Nu­tri­tion (JIF­SAN) GAP pro­gramme of­fered by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land. The pro­gramme, he said, is based on the 'train-the-train­er' con­cept and fo­cus­es on pro­vid­ing coun­tries with an adapt­able frame­work of prac­tices.

Ja­maica In­for­ma­tion Ser­vice