Archive for the ‘Sourcing Safe Foods’ Category

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The USDA attempts to make school lunches safer.

Monday, February 8th, 2010

Have you ever heard the phrase ?A camel is a horse created by committee?? Well read on.

According to a February 5th article by Blake Morrison and Peter Eisler of USA TODAY titled School lunch safety shored up, The United States Department of Agriculture or the USDA announced steps to ?assure the safety and quality food? purchased for the National School Lunch Program.

This author discussed this subject in a post on 12/10/2009 titled I loved school lunches and in a related post on 01/21/2010 titled Where?s the Beef and how do we trace it? As my previous posts point out this is not just a beef problem, a recall management problem, a poultry problem (spent hens) or a traceability problem. It is all of the above and more.

Beyond what the USDA can do and what meat packers and processors can do is what the schools can also do. From a pure sourcing perspective, the question is are our schools just buying what the government has to sell in terms of commodities or are they actually asking questions as to where the products came from, how they were grown and what standards the growers and processors are beings held accountable to.

In another post titled Food Safety requires a community effort I quoted President Obama as having said ?There are certain things only a government can do. And one of those things is ensuring that the foods we eat are safe and do not cause us harm.? So congratulations to the USDA for stepping up. But let?s remember that it is a community effort and as procurement professionals we can not let our guard down just because another program comes along.

Our children and our communities are counting on us.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Try buying products and services that are safe and support the environment.

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Do consumers have the right to expect products, services and other finished goods they purchase from their retailers to be safe and eco friendly?

If so, what level of safety should they expect? Does safety extend beyond the personal safety of their families, pets and loved ones to the ecological impact the manufacturing of these products has on our planet? Who should bear the expense of this increased safety; suppliers, retailers, or consumers? Are there more effective ways in the form of better processes and more modern easy to use tools to reduce costs and increase safety and eco awareness?

A Consumer?s Perspective:

Many baby boomers remember listening to the nightly news as children and young adults and hearing the local anchor person ask the following question. ?It?s 10 o?clock. Do you know where your children are??

In those days, it was fair question. Prior to the development of pagers, cell phones, personal digital assistants smart phones, and Apples newest offering the question challenged parents to be accountable for their children and insure that they were safe. Today, a simple text message or phone call provides some level of security to parents, albeit not the level of safety one might like. But, do we know how the safe the products we consume and use are? Toy recalls, pet food recalls, tainted drugs, many food born illness outbreaks from salmonella to e.coli, melamine, BPA issues, children?s jewelry. The list grows daily.

The question consumers are asking retailers more often these days is how safe is your supply chain? That?s because every retailer has a similar but different supply chain.? Consumers are interested as to what level their retailer understands where their products come from??? The Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness Act of 2002 was fully enacted in 2004. It requires processors, distributors, importers and other reseller groups in the United States to maintain records that identify the immediate sources that they receive food from and the recipients they send it to. There are any number of other laws and standards we discuss in this post regularly covering virtually every product made.

Should consumers have anything to worry about and if so what risk does this pose for retailers? Visit us tomorrow for some answers.

We appreciate and look forward to your comments.

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This author loves all kinds of Salami. Is it traceable?

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Rose said, ?toughie (their nick name for me) get out of the Salami?. I had this bad habit of reaching in the refrigerator (possible contamination) and taking 5 or 6 slices that had been cut in half for pizza and stuffing them in my mouth all at once. The Salami was either Genoa or Volpi or some other top quality brand. I did not even know where it came from and I?m sure that neither Rose nor Margaret (both from Italy) the proprietors could trace it either.

Today I live in Arizona. We have a few good Italian eateries here but not a very large Italian community. I was reading the Arizona Republic today when an article jumped out at me titled R.I. Company recalls salami. This article was attributed to the Associated Press. Being as Rhode Island is very close to Boston and also has a great Italian section called Federal Hill and the subject was salami I read on. As you are aware, my most recent post was also on product safety and traceability, titled Procurement Professionals can aid in product safety adherence.

The article went on to say that a Rhode Island meat company had recalled 1.24 million pounds of pepper coated salami after month?s long investigation of a salmonella outbreak that sickened 184 people in 38 states by comparing shopping receipts of those who got sick. This certainly supports one forward and one back accountability from a retailer?s perspective but this author is not sure that the intention of the rule is to have to chase down receipts which is extremely time consuming, costly and a strategy that provides the possibility of an extremely limited sample.

The definition of traceability according to Wikipedia refers to the completeness of the information about every step in a process chain. Traceability is the ability to verify the history, location, or application of an item by means of documented recorded identification. Doing this systematically is where the retail industry needs to be.

This author has discussed this in numerous previous posts. One of my favorites is from September of 2008 titled Traceability-also-requires-sensibility-if-you-want-a-safe-supply-chain.? So what can you do as a retailer? Begin by asking your e-procurement solutions provider how they address traceability with their tools.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Where?s the Beef and how do we trace it?

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

A recent beef recall reported in the USA TODAY on January 20th indicated that 864,000 pounds of beef have been recalled by a Southern California based meat packing company because it might contain e.coli. The good news is that this occurrence was caught during a food safety inspection. This means that sometimes the systems we have in place work. So kudos?s to those that are doing their jobs on behalf of public interest.

What the above situation does not suggest is the problem associated with recalls and the role that traceability in the supply chain plays. Although there has been a lot of work done over the last couple of years, the accepted standard in traceability continues to be one forward one back. That means we require knowing where the meat packing company got their meat from and who they sold it to. In the USA TODAY article it suggested that? the meat was distributed to distribution centers, restaurants and hotels in California for a 3 month period in 2008 and a 10 day period during 2010. The question this begs is where did those organizations distribute the product to and can they recall it if the product even still exists. The act of a recall can be both good and bad. Hopefully it is good for the consumer. It is however never good for the distributor since they already paid for the product. It may however improve their reputation with their customers as a quality company.

What this short article suggests is that safety inspections need to be carried out on schedule and resulting recalls have to be executed quickly to all destination points in the supply chain. This clearly requires better than one forward one back accountability and is what all procurement solution providers should be striving for with their data sources.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Where’s the Beef and how do we trace it?

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

A recent beef recall reported in the USA TODAY on January 20th indicated that 864,000 pounds of beef have been recalled by a Southern California based meat packing company because it might contain e.coli. The good news is that this occurrence was caught during a food safety inspection. This means that sometimes the systems we have in place work. So kudos’s to those that are doing their jobs on behalf of public interest.

What the above situation does not suggest is the problem associated with recalls and the role that traceability in the supply chain plays. Although there has been a lot of work done over the last couple of years, the accepted standard in traceability continues to be one forward one back. That means we require knowing where the meat packing company got their meat from and who they sold it to. In the USA TODAY article it suggested that  the meat was distributed to distribution centers, restaurants and hotels in California for a 3 month period in 2008 and a 10 day period during 2010. The question this begs is where did those organizations distribute the product to and can they recall it if the product even still exists. The act of a recall can be both good and bad. Hopefully it is good for the consumer. It is however never good for the distributor since they already paid for the product. It may however improve their reputation with their customers as a quality company.

What this short article suggests is that safety inspections need to be carried out on schedule and resulting recalls have to be executed quickly to all destination points in the supply chain. This clearly requires better than one forward one back accountability and is what all procurement solution providers should be striving for with their data sources.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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ISO 22000:2005

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

The document was titled Guidance for Industry Questions and Answers Regarding the Reportable Food Registry as Established by the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007 June 2009; Revised September 2009. After coming up with more questions than answers, I referred back to ISO 22000 from which is the standard for food safety.

ISO 22000:2005 specifies requirements for a food safety management system where an organization in the food chain needs to demonstrate its ability to control food safety hazards in order to ensure that food is safe at the time of human consumption. It is applicable to all organizations, regardless of size, which are involved in any aspect of the food chain and want to implement systems that consistently provide safe products. The means of meeting any requirements of ISO 22000:2005 can be accomplished through the use of internal and/or external resources. ISO 22000:2005 specifies requirements to enable an organization — to plan, implement, operate, maintain and update a food safety management system aimed at providing products that, according to their intended use, are safe for the consumer.

With the number of health scares that have taken place in the last couple of years including in our school systems it might make good sense to review how your suppliers comply with this standard.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Do your suppliers adhere to all of ISO’s environmental standards?

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

ISO has published a new, updated brochure providing a basic introduction, as its title indicates, to Environmental management – The ISO 14000 family of International Standards. The 12-page, color brochure is the latest edition of a successful publication first released in 1998, two years after the launching of the first standards in the ISO 14000 family

The International Organization for Standardization widely known as ISO, is an international standard -setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Founded on February 23, 1947, the organization promulgates world-wide industrial and commercial standards. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. While ISO defines itself as a non – governmental, its ability to set standards that often become law, either through treaties or national standards makes it more powerful than most non-governmental organizations. In practice, ISO acts as a consortium with strong links to governments.

The SafeSourceIt™ Supplier Database holds it suppliers accountable to many ISO standards including 14000, 7002, 9001 and 22000.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Do your suppliers adhere to all of ISO?s environmental standards?

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

ISO has published a new, updated brochure providing a basic introduction, as its title indicates, to Environmental management ? The ISO 14000 family of International Standards. The 12-page, color brochure is the latest edition of a successful publication first released in 1998, two years after the launching of the first standards in the ISO 14000 family

The International Organization for Standardization widely known as ISO, is an international standard -setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Founded on February 23, 1947, the organization promulgates world-wide industrial and commercial standards. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. While ISO defines itself as a non ? governmental, its ability to set standards that often become law, either through treaties or national standards makes it more powerful than most non-governmental organizations. In practice, ISO acts as a consortium with strong links to governments.

The SafeSourceIt? Supplier Database holds it suppliers accountable to many ISO standards including 14000, 7002, 9001 and 22000.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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What is Fair Trade Certification?

Monday, January 4th, 2010

Fair Trade Certification Overview:

The Fair Trade Certified? label guarantees consumers that strict economic, social and environmental criteria were met in the production and trade of an agricultural product. Fair Trade Certification is currently available in the U.S. for coffee, tea and herbs, cocoa and chocolate, fresh fruit, flowers, sugar, rice, and vanilla. TransFair USA licenses companies to display the Fair Trade Certified label on products that meet strict international Fair Trade standards.
Fair Trade Certification empowers farmers and farm workers to lift themselves out of poverty by investing in their farms and communities, protecting the environment, and developing the business skills necessary to compete in the global marketplace.

Fair Trade principles include:
??Fair prices:
?? Fair labor conditions:
?? Direct trade:
??Democratic and transparent organizations:
??Community development:
??Environmental sustainability

If you are a supplier, do the right thing and get certified.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Food Safety for Retailers should be a high priority New Years Resolution!

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

In addition to that article the two papers I read today had a total of seven other articles or opinions on safe consumables including a focus on airport food, school cafeteria food, fast food and others. Houston we have a problem!

Today?s procurement knowledge workers responsible for purchasing consumables for their customer base are growing more concerned in their ability to procure safe products, suppliers to deliver safe products, or farms and manufacturers to produce safe products.

So what can be done to improve the situation? To begin with buyers require fresh reliable data. This begins with understanding your trading partners? commitment to food and consumable product safety.? From a pure sourcing perspective asking simple questions like; how do you insure that the new sources of supply that you offer us for inclusion in e-procurement events will deliver safe products? The answer is not as simple as just responding by saying we or they support GFSI, SQF or any number of other safe food initiatives. The answer should be that as a vendor they have a large data rich supplier database from which to choose new sources of supply that is easily searchable by the retailer which includes safety data and basic RFI information. Additionally, all suppliers, brokers, manufacturers and others should be held accountable to a variety of safe food standards as elements of the data. Although this is just the first step in supplier selection, it is an important one. A tangential analysis should be ranking these suppliers based on the safety standards they adhere to versus what the industry considers to be best practice implementation. Additionally an e-procurement partner should be able to provide easy access to industry safety updates and alerts on a daily basis and a consistent refresh of the supplier database, based on new information as it becomes available such as suppliers that have failed or missed inspections or had other types of violations. Although traceability also enters into this discussion, it is also something that is required after a product has failed, been recalled or caused illness.

To conclude your questioning of your sourcing solution provider a final step should be; Show me!

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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