Summary of International OFRR Training Satisfaction

Summary of Survey

Generic Clearance of Customer Satisfaction

OMB Control No. 0910-0360

International On-Farm Readiness Review (OFRR) Training Satisfaction Survey

The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) was signed into law on January 4, 2011. It ensures the U.S. food supply is safe by shifting the focus from responding to contamination to preventing it. As part of the agency’s ongoing efforts to implement FSMA, the Produce Safety Rule (PSR) established science-based minimum standards for the safe growing, harvesting, packing, and holding of fruits and vegetables grown for human consumption. The final rule went into effect January 26, 2016. The standards apply to fresh produce grown domestically, as well as fresh produce imported to the United States from foreign countries.

The FDA has established the Produce Safety Network to support the efforts of farmers and other key stakeholders with complying with the Produce Safety Rule. One of the resources available to farmers is the On-Farm Readiness Review (OFRR) program. OFRR provides farmers real-time feedback on their current operations and facilities. These reviews can help farmers address any areas in need of improvement before a regulatory inspection takes place in the future. As part of this program for advance, readiness reviews, food safety professionals conduct voluntary, non-regulatory visits to farms and packinghouses. Their goal is to observe current practices and provide feedback on how those practices can be strengthened to better align with regulatory expectations. These reviews are not inspections.

Problem being investigated:

Given the significant volume of imported produce, FDA uses the On-Farm Readiness Review tool for farms exporting fresh produce to the United States, to support farmers in achieving compliance with the PSR. In Latin America, FDA is providing OFRR training to foreign government personnel and university personnel. The training will enable foreign government and university personnel to offer OFRR to farmers in Latin America.

To assess foreign trainees’ satisfaction with the FDA international OFRR training and to make necessary adjustments to the training content, FDA has developed an International OFRR Training Satisfaction Survey. The survey asks trainees’ satisfaction with the training, trainees’ self-identified knowledge on PSR, whether the information provided during the training was easy to understand, areas for improvements, and general feedback on the training. The satisfaction survey will serve as a formative testing and its results are being used to help FDA make needed improvements to future OFRR trainings. Thus, FDA ensures the foreign government and university personnel receive effective education and information and further provides FDA’s support to foreign farmers for the implementation of the PSR under FSMA.

Methodology used to collect the data:

A 3rd party contractor (University Extension Services) helped administer the survey and collect data. Attendees of the international OFRR trainings were notified at the beginning of their training about the data collection. Trainees willing to voluntarily take the survey were recruited. At the last session of the training, recruited respondents were instructed to complete the training satisfaction survey.

The International OFRR Training Satisfaction Survey was translated and administrated in the official language of the country where the training will be provided. For the FY 2020 trainings in Chile and Mexico, the survey was translated and administrated in Spanish.

Burden Imposed:

30 burden hours were approved to conduct the OFRR Satisfaction Survey to ensure that voluntary participants were able to complete the survey to help FDA make improvements to future OFRR trainings. This was based on an estimated time of 12 minutes for 150 respondents to complete the survey, for a total of 30 hours.