Bill Text: HI SCR137 | 2015 | Regular Session | Introduced

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Bill Title: Hawaii Good Agricultural Practices Program

Spectrum: Strong Partisan Bill (Democrat 12-1)

Status: (Introduced - Dead) 2015-04-01 - Report adopted, referred to WAM. [SCR137 Detail]

Download: Hawaii-2015-SCR137-Introduced.html

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THE SENATE	S.C.R. NO.	137
TWENTY-EIGHTH LEGISLATURE, 2015
STATE OF HAWAII

SENATE CONCURRENT

RESOLUTION

 

 

Requesting the department of agriculture to establish the hawaii good agricultural practices program.

 

 

     WHEREAS, Hawaii's farms and farmers reflect the heritage and diversity of many cultures and people and are the cornerstones of the State's goals for food security, sustainability, and self-sufficiency; and

 

     WHEREAS, the Hawaii State Constitution mandates the preservation and protection of agricultural resources; and

 

     WHEREAS, the number of small farms in Hawaii has grown substantially during the last ten years, shifting the agricultural landscape from plantations to smaller farms with diverse cropping and marketing systems; and

 

     WHEREAS, there is a renewed interest in planting school gardens and enabling children to eat and enjoy food grown on campus; and

 

     WHEREAS, these trends are creating new local food sources and increased employment, which necessitate the development of science-based good agricultural practices and risk-reducing guidelines to prevent potential food product contamination; and

 

     WHEREAS, at the national level, the Food and Safety Modernization Act of 2011 authorizes the Food and Drug Administration to develop science- and risk-based criteria for preventing food-borne illnesses and encourages states to establish similar intrastate criteria for the safe production, distribution, and consumer handling of food; and

 

     WHEREAS, due to economic thresholds, the Food Safety Modernization Act only covers twenty-one percent of produce farms in the United States, and oversight will not come to Hawaii until 2017 or 2018, and even then will not cover the full range of behaviors that are covered by a solid good agricultural practices program; and

 

     WHEREAS, good agricultural practices programs established elsewhere, including Georgia-GAPs, CanadaGAPs, KenyaGAPs, and ThaiGAPs, and the United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Marketing Service's Harmonized Audit provide risk-reducing practices including on-farm and packing-shed best practices for human hygiene, pest and on-farm animal management, field management, use of pesticide, fertilizer, and soil amendment, water quality for irrigation and produce rinse, packing-shed operations and maintenance, and product trackback; and

 

     WHEREAS, the Hawaii Department of Agriculture has auditors trained in good agricultural practices and an existing auditing rate structure that is the least expensive in the nation; and

 

     WHEREAS, the Hawaii Department of Agriculture has a successful history of agricultural oversight; now, therefore,

 

     BE IT RESOLVED by the Senate of the Twenty-eighth Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2015, the House of Representatives concurring, that the Department of Agriculture is requested to establish a Hawaii good agricultural practices program for farms growing local agricultural food products; and

 

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Hawaii good agricultural practices program:

     (1)  Develop science- and risk- based good agricultural practices that reasonably reduce the potential for on-farm food-borne illness and include, as appropriate, specific considerations and methodologies for farm sizes, practices, techniques, materials, and crops;

     (2)  Develop and implement programs to educate and train Hawaii farmers to learn and implement good agricultural practices in a cost-effective and efficient manner;

     (3)  Provide procedures for the voluntary verification of on-farm implementation of good agricultural practices and the subsequent issuance of state compliance certification; and

     (4)  Develop a consumer information program for publication and broadcast to teach home practices for the treatment and handling of fresh and processed agricultural food products; and

 

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Department of Agriculture consult as necessary with the Department of Health, the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, and other state and federal agencies to develop and implement the Hawaii good agricultural practices program; and

 

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this Concurrent Resolution be transmitted to the Chairperson of the Board of Agriculture and Director of Health.

 

 

 

	OFFERED BY:	_____________________________

Report Title: 

Hawaii Good Agricultural Practices Program