Dr. David Gombas, senior vice president of food safety and technology for United Fresh will speak as part of the education programming at the University of Georgia's accredited HACCP certification course GAPs and GMPs for HACCP-Based Food Safety for the Fresh Produce Industry. The course will run March 2-4 at the university’s Extension Food Science Training Facility in Athens, Ga. United Fresh has again partnered with UGA to offer the course, which is designed to teach safe produce handling practices.

The three-day course will teach participants how to develop and document Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs), Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), Sanitary Standard Operating Procedures (SSOPs) and Good Management Practices (GMPs) for farm and field operations, packing facilities, cold storage operations and produce shippers. Specific break-out sessions will use HACCP principles to teach participants to identify and prevent food safety hazards, set preventive/control measures and control limits, develop control and monitoring procedures, document and verify the results of their efforts, as established by the International HACCP Alliance.

United Fresh members will receive discounted registration for the course. For more information or to register, please call 706-542-2574 or email efs@uga.edu.