Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Food Scientist Flashbacks.

Welcome, I'm excited to share with you our stories of life, love and the pursuit of passing our farm to the next generation!  I hope you find my topics of conversation interesting and relevant to your day to day happenings.

In a former life, I had the opportunity to work in the Quality Control/ Quality Assurance department of a top notch cheese manufacturing cooperative in central Minnesota.  I was lucky (though, it didn't seem so at the time) to have had the opportunity to be actively involved with many different levels and types of audits from regulatory to 3rd party, and everything in-between. These experiences in the auditing and processing sector of food production have often led to implementing various types of best management practices on our own cattle farm.

Once you've work on "both sides of the fence" it's easy to see how there is a real need for farmers and ranchers to have some level of auditing or verification processes for their operations. This recent blog post by Feedyard Foodie about audits and 3rd party verification inspired me to reflect on the importance of "doing what you say and saying what you do" and how that relates into not only added value for your products, but increasing consumer trust.

Walmart, Target, Kraft, McDonalds... the list goes on and on of companies who are large drivers of why and how specific best management practices are implemented in food processing and manufacturing plants around the country.  With massive brands like those, the need to protect that brand is of vital importance to their future. (Don't we, as farmers, have our own brand to protect?) As we progress in our efforts to improve food safety and quality, there is a growing level of need to implement similar best management practices on the farm level.  Just as an F.Y.I. - in order for food processors satisfy the supplier requirements in many of these 3rd party audits, the farmer supplying raw materials to the processing or packing plant must have certain best management practices in place as well.

So, let's talk about audits...  (The idea of being audited is enough to send chills up even the most seasoned veterans back.)  We, in the beef industry, are still in the drivers seat when it comes to implementing an audit strategy on our operations.  For the time being, voluntary auditing schemes are acceptable and readily available to our industry; we also still have the option to self assess.  The National Cattlemen's Beef Association in cooperation with many industry stakeholders, has developed a series of  assessments through the Checkoff funded BQA program.  Completion of self assessments puts your operation ahead of the curve and displays a commitment to safety, quality and transparency. 

Not interested in self assessment?  OR is the processing plant purchasing your product requiring something else?  There are many options for 3rd party audits or in some cases, the beef council within your state has staff available to conduct the BQA assessments with you! The right option is really up to you and how you plan to market your product.

The take home message this:  We need to be proactive in implementing audit strategies on our beef/dairy operations.  If we voluntarily implement the programs already available, we will greatly reduce the chance of being required to complete an audit that is not common sense or efficient.







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