Produce leaves the field fresh, dried or canned, and each state fails in a different way.
Overview
Fresh fruit and vegetables are judged on grade and condition, dried fruits on infestation, canned produce on the adequacy of the thermal process. These guidelines govern fresh, dried and canned produce in one adapted set, prepared from GSO source standards on the normative basis of the Codex produce codes CXC 3, CXC 23 and CXC 53, so that a grower, a packhouse and a cannery supplying the same buyer work to one hygiene logic.
What carries across fresh, dried and canned alike is the assumption that the hazard is already in the field: irrigation water quality and sanitary harvesting settle contamination long before a grader or a retort sees the crop, which is why both the drying yard and the cannery's hygiene programme reach back to harvesting and raw-material transport. What does not carry across is the decisive control. For fresh produce it is the tolerance table and the grounds for rejection; for dried fruit it is infestation and the equipment that spreads it; for canned produce it is thermal processing under a qualified process authority.
What this system covers
- Grading and tolerance — the Extra, Grade 1 and Grade 2 cascade, uniformity and homogeneity within the package, and the grounds on which a consignment may be rejected
- Maturity, ripening and condition — definitions, freedom from residues, and sampling methods integrated with the grading rules
- Drying yard hygiene — irrigation water, sanitary harvesting and the yard managed as a food-processing area
- Infestation control — pest management and segregation of contaminated equipment from harvest through to packing
- Cannery hygiene programme — field sanitation, harvesting and raw-material transport into the plant
- Thermal process control — the process-authority principle behind retort schedules
Who it's for
Fresh produce growers, packers and exporters, dried fruit and canning plants, wholesale market and border inspectors, and quality managers assembling a produce-sector programme. Most arrive with a specific argument to settle: a consignment called down a grade, a load held over infestation, a cannery asked to show who set its retort schedule. What they need is the written tolerance, the yard rule or the process-authority provision in a form they can put in front of the party disputing it.
Key documents
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