CASTROVILLE, Calif. – August 22, 2014 – More than 45 staff in five departments participated in a custom training session led by the United States Department of Agriculture at Ocean Mist Farms’ headquarters in Castroville, Calif., recently.
Ocean Mist Farms Quality Assurance Manager Arlin Valenzuela invited the USDA to train staff on how the regulatory agency inspects and grades product at both shipping and receiving points. Several of the more than 30 commodities that Ocean Mist Farms grows were reviewed in depth as part of the training.
“The session was highly beneficial and allowed our team to better understand our specifications compared to the USDA’s and any variations between the two,” Valenzuela said. “It supports our culture of quality and our strategic initiative to consistently innovate our product quality assurance specifications and procedures.”
The company included staff from field harvesting, quality assurance, food safety, sales and senior management to ensure that Ocean Mist Farms employees have the opportunity to enhance consistency and reliability of product inspections, benchmarked to USDA specifications at all levels companywide.
Valenzuela said the USDA rarely executes a custom training session at a company’s headquarters. The two USDA officials who conducted the training were Mike Morelli, senior training specialist, and Dave Horner, standardizations and master trainer.
