Standardizing Transportation Procedures to Control Food Safety and Quality

Overview:

The course includes activities to help trainees develop a general plan and procedures to standardize and control food quality and safety transportation processes. For food shippers, carriers and receivers, standardization or upgrade to current practices is critical. For buyers, knowing how to establish standards for your food transporters sets the stage for required supply chain controls.

The journey from "Where do we start?" to "We are compliant food safety carriers." begins here and establishes a basis for meeting newly evolving FSMA food safety during transportation requirements.

Developing procedures that combine both process quality and food safety is critical to meeting new FDA FSMA thinking. General information required to understand how measurement of food transportation processes can provide important management information intended to help control potential causes of shelf life loss, food recalls, human illness and death. Case, pallet and container technologies and system designs are covered. Return on Investment (ROI) techniques are covered as well as actual data from a variety of shipments showing how a lack of management and control can cost more than the sanitation and traceability technologies would cost.

Review and understanding of suggested management, sanitation, temperature monitoring/traceability, hazard analysis, training standards will set the stage for the development of relatively simple procedures that are referred to in the shipper's contract of carriage.

There are a number of good reasons to attend this critical and often overlooked food safety training. Your company can:

• Establish standardized company-wide food safety and quality in transportation
• Gain a competitive advantage
• Standardizes processes across multiple plant locations
• Reduce liability
• Meet buyer and customer food transportation safety and quality requirements
• Ensure retailers that transportation suppliers comply with food safety standards and quality and regulatory requirements
• Lay out specific guidelines to impact basic business processes
• Improve customer relationships
• Help meet FDA FSMA and international transportation food safety regulations
• Satisfy food producer requirements for sanitation, temperature controls, and traceability
• Increase exporting opportunities
• Provide risk-based and preventive applications
• Gain efficiencies through standardized solutions

Why should you Attend: Understanding the new rules and building a sanitary transportation system is included in the FDA's FSMA hazard analysis risk-based preventive controls requirements for improved food safety during transportation processes. Failure to establish and keep required documentation exposes food transporters to heavy fines and business closures.

If your company transports or causes food to be transported, standardizing and controlling transportation processes in order to prevent food adulteration and preserve food quality is critical. While the recent Sysco issues provide a good example of what not to do, your company must have a consistent ability to meet customer and legal food safety transportation compliance requirements. It is clear that food container tracking, sanitation, temperature and humidity control and record keeping are becoming supply chain issues requiring increased attention across all company locations.

Areas Covered in the Session:

• FSMA Proposed rules for the sanitary transportation of human and animal foods
• Suggested management, sanitation, temperature monitoring/traceability, hazard analysis and training standards
• Sample procedures
• Documentation
• Electronic record keeping
• Modern technological solutions (EPA and other approved washes & affordable temperature monitoring systems)
• Using the container checklist to perform a gap analysis
• Choosing and working with competent and controlled maintenance personnel
• Internal audits
• The contract of carriage

Who Will Benefit:

• Food shippers, carriers and receivers
• Company Food Logistics Personnel
• Food Safety Team Members
• Internal Food Safety Auditors
• Internal Audit Team Members
• Food Safety Professionals
• Trainers
• Quality Assurance and Quality Control Professionals
• Food Supply Chain Professionals
• Regulatory and Compliance Personnel
• Research & Development Personnel
• Others involved with food in-transit