PHILADELPHIA, PA — Most food service directors and grocery store managers would love to fulfill their patrons’ desire for fresh, local food. But they also must adhere to high food safety standards which few small local farmers have the resources to meet.
This is not an issue for customers of The Common Market, which this month became the first and only local food hub in the country to earn SQF Level 2 certification by the globally recognized Safe Quality Food Institute (SQFI). The Philadelphia-based nonprofit local food distributor audit scored “excellent,” SQFI’s highest rating.
"This certification demonstrates our commitment to food safety and puts us on the cutting edge of this issue for a local food hub," said The Common Market founder and COO Tatiana Garcia-Granados. "It also proves that locally sourced, sustainable farm food can meet the highest global food safety standards, even as it positively impacts local environments, economies and health."
The Common Market worked more than a year to boost their already stringent NSF International-certified food safety practices to meet SQF standards in food safety training, hazard analysis, allergen prevention, site security, crisis management, waste disposal, sanitation, and many other areas.
For example, the distributor can trace the whereabouts of individual cases of every product from the time they pick it up at the farm to when it’s delivered to a store or cafeteria. There is a continuous cold chain and the temperature of all products are monitored at every stage. And all Common Market employees meet weekly for food safety refresher training.
The Common Market has also been working with its farmer-suppliers to help them comply with new, more stringent federal food safety standards required by the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). As of August 2016, all of The Common Market farms in the Mid-Atlantic were certified by the USDA-compliant, third-party Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) food safety program, itself impressive for a local food hub. Only 14 percent of hubs canvassed in Michigan State University's most recent National Food Hub Survey required GAP certification of their suppliers.
SQF certification is based on standards created by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), a food industry program designed to reduce the incidence of food-borne illness with third-party validation that food has been handled using the highest possible food safety practices at every point in its journey from farm to table. The Common Market’s certification is in the wholesaling and distribution of produce and other food.
Although entirely voluntary, GFSI-compliant certification like SQF is being embraced as the gold standard in food safety by increasing numbers of food retailers and foodservice providers. Large companies like Wal-Mart and Publix already require it of their suppliers.
So why don’t the other 174 local food hubs identified by the USDA have SQF certification? Achieving this level of food safety is time-consuming and expensive, especially for wholesalers who work with small family farms. And SQF is less important for the many food hubs that primarily distribute direct-to-consumer via farm shares or farm markets, with their less-stringent food safety standards. By contrast, the majority of The Common Market sales are to the more-highly-regulated hospitals, schools and grocery stores.
“We all want our food to be safe,” says Garcia-Granados. “But positive moves towards more stringent food safety standards can have an unintended negative effect on small farmers.” Garcia-Granados points to the U.S. beef industry, which went from thousands of small and mid-size livestock processors into only a handful of mega-businesses following the 1967 passage of the Wholesome Meat Act, with its expensive-to-implement food safety rules. Garcia-Granados explains: “One major reason we sought SQF certification is to make sure our small farmers aren’t cut out from doing business with these large food buyers and that those they serve don't miss out on the opportunity to enjoy local, fresh and healthy fruits and vegetables.”
For more information about The Common Market, visit www.commonmarketphila.org. For more information about SQF certification, visit www.sqfi.com.
About The Common Market
The Common Market is a nonprofit local food distributor that has its roots in healthy cooking classes run by a married couple of community activists in Philadelphia’s low-income Strawberry Mansion neighborhood in the early 2000s. Six days a week, The Common Market trucks pick up fruits and vegetables, dairy products and meat from 75 farmers within 250 miles of its Philadelphia warehouse and deliver it to hospitals, universities, schools and grocery stores from Washington, D.C., to Trenton, N.J. From its 2008 start, this local food hub's mission and sales efforts have focused on healthcare and educational institutions, both to increase access to healthy food for underserved populations and to ensure large, stable markets for small local farmers.
Source: The Common Market