PathOrganic - Identification of Critical Control Points for organic vegetable crops

Summary

The aim of this work is the identification of Critical Control Points1 (CCPs) for organic farms, which use manure for the production of organic lettuce, cabbage, carrots and spinach in Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, and Denmark. Due to the application of manure, vegetables are at risk to be contaminated with enteropathogens such as Escherichia coli pathogenic strains (i. e. O157:H7), Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium, Campylobacter jejuni, Listeria monocyto-genes, and Staphylococcus aureus.
This work applies part of the principles and steps described for HACCP2 to identify the CCPs. The steps described hereafter are reported in the course guidance document “HACCP in agri-culture – Organic milk production” (1) and were adapted to the agricultural production of field vegetables.
The hazard analysis is based on the characteristics of the above mentioned enteropathogens and the agricultural practices applied by the organic farmers in the four countries when growing lettuce, cabbage, carrots, and spinach. The assessment of the actual agricultural practices uses the evaluation of interviews conducted with organic farmers growing these vegetables and using manure as fertiliser. In total were interviewed 16 farmers in Austria, 16 farmers in Switzerland, 13 farmers in Sweden, and 9 farmers in Denmark. In general terms, there is no agricultural practice common to the majority of organic farmers concerning the management of animal ma-nure, fertilisation, irrigation, harvest and postharvest management when growing lettuce, cab-bage, spinach, and carrots in Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, and Sweden.
Using the decision tree of the HACCP system, CCPs were identified for the primary production of organic field vegetables. Where appropriate, instead of CCPs were defined PRP-CPs3 or OP-PRPs4. Four CCPs were identified for the process steps ‘storage of animal manure’, ‘fertilisation practices’, ‘prevention of runoff and flooding’, and ‘irrigation practices’.