Swiss Meat and Sausage Stays on Top of Food Safety with HACCP Plan

Like all food processors, Swiss Meat & Sausage Company must follow rigid safety standards to ensure the safety and quality of their products. With growth and personnel changes, they needed to ensure their team was on top of their hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP) food safety plan to ensure full compliance. They needed to perform a review of their existing HACCP procedures and conduct a safe quality food (SQF) analysis to identify areas where they needed to make improvements to meet SQF certification. Just as importantly, Swiss Meats wanted to make sure their staff was up to par on the ins and outs of the rules so everyone understood the details of their current HACCP plan, and how to make sure it was followed to the letter. They reached out to Missouri Enterprise, part of the MEP National Network™, for assistance.

Missouri Enterprise brought in one of their food safety experts to conduct a HACCP plan review and SQF gap analysis to identify areas Swiss Meats needed to focus on. They began the process by walking through the plant with key personnel to review every aspect of processing, explaining in simple terms what needed to be done to secure SQF compliance. A detailed written report was produced that identified “gaps” between Swiss Meats’ HACCP quality management standard, and specific recommendations to achieve SQF certification. “They took the time to see what we do in real life, reviewing every step of our processes and communicating with our staff and answering questions to make sure everyone understood what we needed to do,” says Sharon Fennewald, manager at Swiss Meats. “When they were done, we had a detailed action plan to get and keep us on track.”