Meijer Preps for Food Safety Rules With SQF

MICHAEL GARRY

PHOENIX — By pursuing food safety certification based on Safe Quality Food (SQF) standards for its manufacturing/warehousing facilities, Meijer, Grand Rapids, Mich., is preparing itself to meet any new federal food safety laws passed by Congress this year, said Robert Mooney, Meijer's group vice president, distribution and manufacturing.

“If you're compliant with SQF level three, you're almost compliant with the regulations being proposed,” said Mooney in a food safety presentation he delivered last week at the Supply Chain Conference here, sponsored by the FMI-GMA Trading Partner Alliance. “The nomenclature in the bills is the same as the nomenclature in SQF. So SQF makes it easier to figure out what's going on.”

SQF is a global food safety and quality certification program that provides independent validation that a company's food safety and quality management system complies with international and domestic food safety standards. The program was launched in 1994 in Australia and since 2004 has been administered by the SQF Institute, a division of the Food Marketing Institute, Arlington, Va. It is one of four programs that fall under the Global Food Safety Initiative, administered by the Consumer Foods Forum, Paris.

Meijer is slated to have its first level-three SQF certification audit at its Middlebury, Ind., deli/bakery manufacturing/warehousing facility this month, Mooney told SN following his food safety presentation. “We've been working on this for several months, going through all the documentation and training,” he said.

Third-party auditing firm NSF, Ann Arbor, Mich., will inspect the Middlebury facility during a two- or three-day period to determine whether it qualifies for SQF certification. Meijer has three other large food distribution/manufacturing facilities — one in Michigan and two in Ohio — that will be also be seeking SQF certification, Mooney said.

Many of the food safety protocols required by SQF are already being followed by Meijer, though not in as regimented a fashion, Mooney noted. For example, Meijer is calibrating its thermometers, but not according to a fixed schedule. “SQF tells you how often you're supposed to do it,” he said. “It helps you get organized and think in a prescriptive manner.”

Last fall, Meijer hired Vanessa Broadnax as manager of quality control, manufacturing, charged with getting the chain level-three SQF-certified in its food manufacturing and warehousing facilities. On the wholesale level, she heads up the recently consolidated food safety functions at Meijer, which is consolidating food safety responsibilities on its retail side as well, Mooney said.

Following Mooney's presentation at the Supply Chain Conference, Broadnax described how Meijer is approaching SQF certification as well as how other food distributors and suppliers can pursue it. In her presentation, she conveyed her dedication to food safety.

“I'm tasked to get certification, but my passion is food safety,” she said. With food safety achieved, “certification will come.” She urged the audience of supply chain executives to share her zeal, at one point leading them to loudly declare, “We're committed!”

Broadnax stressed that it's not necessary for companies seeking SQF certification to reinvent the wheel, because many of the building blocks are probably already in place. “People say, ‘Oh, SQF involves so much, I can't do it.’ But you're already doing it,” she said. “Do you have a preventative maintenance program? Maybe it's not as disciplined as SQF but it's a starting point.” Operations, maintenance, quality control, administration and loss-prevention departments already have procedures and policies that can be adapted for SQF, she noted.

To determine what weaknesses need to be addressed, companies can employ a “gap assessment” tool provided by SQF, Broadnax said. She suggested starting at “the bottom of the pyramid” with foundational food safety requirements such as sanitation, personal hygiene, chemical controls, allergen controls, traceability and recalls.