TraceGains Was Ahead of the Curve Addressing Food Safety Audit HACCP Issues

Feb. 17, 2014 - PRLog -- In conjunction with some food safety audit survey findings, TraceGains looked at how fortelling those results were in the food industry.  Last year, TraceGains welcomed food safety expert, Debby Newslow, President, D.L. Newslow & Associates, Inc. to discuss how food manufacturers can create an ‘Approved Supplier Program’ as a prerequisite for a successful HACCP program.

Newslow explained that HACCP is not a stand-alone program. The production of safe food products requires that the HACCP Plan be built on a solid foundation of prerequisite programs. Prerequisite programs provide the basic environment and operating conditions that are necessary for the production of safe, wholesome food.

Examples of HACCP prerequisite programs include:

Allergen Control

GMP/Pest Control

Raw Material Control System

Sanitation

Chemical Control

Supplier Certification Programs

Receiving, Storage, Distribution

Traceability and Recall

According to Newslow, “We need to be concerned about our suppliers because hazards come from two places, it can be added during any food manufacturing process, or received or created by the supplier. Some say that 60% of all recalls can be traced to a supplier. This figure could be very low. Some recent examples include pet food with melamine and salmonella, ice cream with the wrong ingredients, spinach containing E. Coli from the water supply, and the list continues."

Food manufacturers can choose suppliers that can meet the company needs both with product and service requirements.  They must know the ingredient requirements including any known food safety hazards and how these are normally controlled. Food manufacturing leaders need to know the type and extent of control applied to supplier is dependent on the effect of the purchase product on subsequent product realization or the final product.

Gary Nowacki, CEO, TraceGains noted, “Hazards come from two places; we add them or we receive them from our suppliers. TraceGains knows what expected from an effective supplier management program and who is ultimately responsible for the safety of the products & materials received from suppliers.”

Newslow is the author of The ISO 9000 Quality System: Applications in Food and Technology and is also the author of a HACCP-based chapter included in the John Wiley & Sons release of the Food Safety Compendium.

TraceGains (www.tracegains.com) provides food and beverage manufacturers and distributors with a web-based, full-service supplier, compliance, and regulatory document management solution that automates and streamlines processes to convert static documents into actionable data. With a network of more than 5,000 supplier members and more than 250 deployment sites, TraceGains offers an ever-expanding database of suppliers, purchased items, and documents that companies can leverage to improve product quality, accelerate product development, and meet regulatory and audit pressures. TraceGains not only digitizes all incoming documents, making them easily searchable, but also extracts critical data and analyzes them against customer-specific business and compliance rules, alerting stakeholders to any non-compliance. TraceGains’ automated solution assures companies that documentation is up to date, organized, and searchable, making companies 365 Audit Ready. TraceGains’ customers boast a four to six month return on their investment. Recently, TraceGains was listed as one of Food Logistics Top 100 software and technology providers. Follow TraceGains on Twitter at @tracegains.

TraceGains, Inc.

www.tracegains.com

Jennifer Brusco

Marketing Strategist

pr@tracegains.com

720-465-9400