Risky Business: HACCP Programs for Small Businesses

Why Should You Attend:

This webinar will review the first steps of creating a food safety and HACCP program in an on-going operating business. The presenter will share experiences directly from the field, learned as a food safety consultant paid to set up Food Safety and HACCP programs in the area of start-up food manufacturing businesses. You will learn from real world examples and understand how to deal with food safety issues and risks that smaller companies are exposed to.

This session will focus on new businesses with a profile of SQF low-risk type manufacturing companies that want to sell to Costco, Whole Foods or any other company that requires a 3rd party audit to verify a food safety program. We will review key company decisions necessary to provide a safe food operating platform for food manufacturing, and highlight key areas to address when you are setting up or modifying HACCP/Food Safety programs with minimal staff. We will also cover potential pitfalls with HR, workman compensation insurance issues and review downstream issues that could affect a company as part of this class.

This training is intended for owners of small to medium-size food manufacturing companies, local farmers markets and family style businesses that want to put their products on the shelves of companies like Costco, Whole Foods, Safeway and other grocery chains.

Learning Objective:

Attendees will understand

1. HACCP pre-requisites and Food Safety programs: what programs need to be in place ‘right now' and which ‘can wait'..
2. Strategies on how to manage or create a new food safety program while a business is fully operational and has little experience with HACCP
3. Strategies in how to assess risky production line issues and establish CP's.
4. Avoiding administrative or operational pitfalls and obstacles to SOP's and GMP's.
5. The valuable role of complaint response.
6. Lessons learned from a consultants viewpoint: take on a client or not?
7. Tips and Tricks for building compliance economically.
8. CFR Title 21 and the Food Model Code during HACCP program construction.
9. Identify Time/Temperature exposure in production vs finished product processes.
10. Identify Cross contamination issues:  product transfer, finished product, work tools.
11. Setting up records compliance in small offices. Multiple program compliance on one sheet.
12. Records compliance with minimal employees and office support.
13. Evaluating company ownership or buy-in to Food Safety program GMP's etc.
14. Vendor delivery lesson- impact and costs illustrated. Approved vendor-delivered or picked up?

Who Will Benefit:

• Businesses that want to sell to Costco or other larger companies
• QA/Food Safety Department managers that want ethnic foods from new companies.
• Company Internal Food Safety staff that inspects vendors for your company.
• Auditors who review new Food Manufactures/Vendors.
• New food businesses that want to learn how to succeed and grow new business opportunities.

Instructor Profile:

David Armatis, is a certified professional of food safety (CP-FS) credentialed by the National Environmental Health Association. He has been a member of the Conference for Food Protection (CFP) since 2004.

David is an active CFP committee member in the areas of PHF/TCS foods, Food Recalls and Food Borne Illness training. As a conference member, he helped update the 2005, 2009 and 2012 (pending) versions of the Food Model Code.

In 2012, as Director of Food Safety/QA for a local food manufacturing company, he obtained 96 of 100 points on their Costco GMP/Food Safety Program Audit. He is currently working as an independent food safety contractor with 2 companies preparing for Costco GOP audits, on HACCP plans for sous vide/ROP packaging for a culinary school program, and supporting retail 'approved supplier' status for small family and artisan produce farms in Northern California.

Topic Background:

In 2012, there is strong demand to put authentic ethnic foods on the shelves of companies like Costco, Whole Foods, Safeway and other grocery chains. Buyers are currently hunting local farmers markets and food truck venues for ‘new stars’ for their product lines.

This sets up a potential for serious conflicts in food safety for both the buyer of a larger company and a typical farmers market family-style business.

Buyers want new products on their shelves as soon as possible. But knowledgeable large company buyers also know they have to help grow those farmers market/home style food vendors into safer, bigger companies that meet their own standards or their SF/QA departments won’t allow the products to be shipped. The family business is facing a problem too, production for maybe 100 times their usual sales! Both the buyer, and the family business have the same dilemma. Can they get to a higher production level, make deliveries on time, and still provide safe food to a wider market?

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