Best practices, food safety, and sustainability are all important issues. When you select hops and hop suppliers, what are your expectations? Do these terms mean the same to hop growers as they do to you? Let’s discuss Hop Growers of America’s efforts to implement transparent programs allowing growers to provide their customers with a more standardized approach to best practices for hop growing and harvesting. The newly launched “Good Bines” platform offers education and self-assessment modules to assist growers with implementation of important food safety and risk assessment procedures. We will also review the goals and benefits of independently audited programs that are increasingly prominent among U.S. hop growers, including GLOBALG.A.P., Salmon Safe and others.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn about the new “
• Good Bines”
• grower education and self-assessment program and audited programs utilized by U.S. hop growers
• Demonstrate new tools allowing brewers to identify specific programs to manage risk, quality and other important factors
• Discuss self-assessment, trade audits and independent audits to determine the best fit for your raw materials sourcing program