Fogarty Research & Consulting
Produce safety for controlled environment agriculture
If you run a greenhouse, vertical farm, hydroponic operation, or aquaponic operation in New England, I can help you find the food safety standard your buyers actually require — and build a practical path to audit readiness.
Book a free 20-minute call
Start with the right question
Many CEA operators come to food safety the same way: a buyer says “we need you certified,” and the operator starts pricing out SQF because it’s the name they’ve heard. For a lot of CEA operations, that’s more than the buyer actually requires.
So the first job isn’t preparing for an audit — it’s figuring out which audit you actually need. Before you start closing gaps, you need to know which gaps matter for your business, and choosing the wrong audit path can cost far more than the assessment itself.
I help CEA operators avoid the wrong compliance path and build food safety systems that match their actual operation.
The core engagement
The CEA Produce Safety Readiness Assessment
A one-day, on-site assessment of your operation against the standard your buyers actually require — delivered as a written diagnostic report and a prioritized roadmap your team can act on. Start here when you’re not yet sure where you stand.
Who this is for
CEA operations across New England in the $1M–$15M revenue range — greenhouses, vertical farms, container farms, hydroponic and aquaponic growers. The common thread: there’s no full-time food safety hire, and compliance has landed on an operations person who already has a full plate — often because a buyer has started asking questions.
Why work with me?
From 2021 to 2025 I did produce safety education and technical assistance for exactly these operations at the Northeast Center to Advance Food Safety (NECAFS). I built NECAFS’s produce safety resources for hydroponic and aquaponic growers — public at go.uvm.edu/ponics — and my graduate research was on microbial water quality in greenhouse-scale aquaponic systems. I’m a PSA-certified Trainer and hold UF/IFAS Packinghouse HACCP certification.
Very few consultants work specifically on CEA food safety. The systems-level questions that come up in a greenhouse or an aquaponic operation — recirculating water, dense and rapid indoor production — are a different problem from outdoor farming, and that problem is what I’ve spent the last 8 years of my career on.
Let’s figure out where you stand
Tell me who your buyers are, what they’re asking for, and where your operation stands now. A free 20-minute call is enough to sort out the likely audit path and whether a readiness assessment makes sense.