CDFA Auditor Cross-Training Exercise
April 2-3, 2014. Lakeside Organic Gardens hosted a training event for four California Department of Food & Agriculture (CDFA) food safety auditors and their supervisors.
Mathew Regusci, and Alvaro Soto from BSI Americas led the exercise for the CDFA auditors so they could gain working experience in the GFSI Food Safety auditing system. The Lakeside Organic Gardens food safety team (Gary Waugaman, Javeth Saldivar, and Kara Waugaman) provided first-hand views of harvest crews, farms, and documentation examples throughout the two-day event.
“We started by looking at ten harvest crews and vegetable farms. Then we spent the next day looking through paperwork relating to inspections, documentation, testing, and SOP’s (Standard Operating Procedures). It was a great experience to learn from one another, and engage in some very interesting discussions about industry issues”, said Gary Waugaman, Food Safety Manager.
The goal of the event was for the CDFA Auditors to gain valuable experience in the GFS audit scheme. The goal was to enable auditors to learn how to do one audit instead of two, while lowering costs and increasing efficiencies for auditors and growers. This is a new direction for the industry and compliance standards.
“It was a great event that we found it to be a good experience for our team, and the auditing folks as well. We were honored that the people from BSI Americas and the CDFA were confident enough in our program to ask us to participate,” said Waugaman.
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