Within days of the release of the Food Safety Best Practices Guide for the Growing and Handling of Mexican Papaya document in April 2020, Mexican papaya growers, packers and importers were requesting and downloading the document from the Texas International Produce Association’s (TIPA) and the United Fresh Produce Association (UFPA) website. Sparked by a Salmonella outbreak in June of 2019, it was evident that measures were needed to identify and address risks, and to bring the entire industry up to a higher base-line for food safety.

In order to help any company handling papayas answer questions concerning this new best practices guide and how to begin implementation, TIPA and UFPA will host a webinar scheduled for June 4^th. Speakers include Dante Galeazzi, President & CEO of TIPA, and Emily Griep, Food Safety Manager of UFPA. This webinar will also discuss how this broad international collaboration plans to make the guide an on-going effort, with an education and research component, and how partners can help drive early adoption on a large scale.

“We’ve received incredible feedback from retail and foodservice companies, particularly during the development of the best practices document. During this webinar, we expect more questions from all the various buyer entities in North America. As an industry, we want those further up the supply chain to not only embrace but to promote this effort and encourage their suppliers of Mexican papayas to participate in this guidance. After all, it’s a FREE document!”

said Dante Galeazzi.

Source: Texas International Produce Association

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