WSDA Food Workshops & EPA Comment Deadline

A series of four one-day value added food workshops, hosted by the Washington State Department of Agriculture, begins today in Puyallup and will meet each week through May 16. Fred Berman, education and outreach specialist with WSDA’s Food Safety and Consumer Services Division is leading the workshops. WSDA’s Mike Louisell talks a bit about the purpose behind the workshops.

LOUISELL: The Department of Agriculture tries to foster as much business as possible for the farming and food processing communities. Fred Berman, with the help of others, will talk with farmers, chefs, food processors who want to use what we call value added products - being able to create things like jams, jellies, pickles, sauces, various salsas, even naturally fermented vegetables, ideas where farmers can get more long term sales over a year than just the fresh harvest that we have.

The WSDA hopes to bring the workshops to other parts of the state as well.

April 30 is the cut off date for submitting public comments to the Environmental Protection Agency on a draft federal evaluation the EPA received from the National Marine Fisheries Service regarding the use of pesticides oryzalin, pendimethalin, and trifluralin and their potential effects on Pacific salmon and steelhead listed as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Due to the NMFS’s May 31 legal deadline to issue the final Biological Opinion, the EPA will not provide extensions to this comment period.

I’m Lacy Gray and that’s Washington Ag Today on the Northwest Ag Information Network.