CUB REDOING HACCP PROGRAM IN WISCONSIN

PAMELA BLAMEY

Madison, WI -- Cub Foods here, a division of Supervalu, Minneapolis, is overhauling the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) program in its smokehouse operations with help from state food safety officials.

As a result of their joint efforts, the chain is streamlining smokehouse and vacuum packing procedures throughout its Wisconsin stores.

"Because of the elevated food safety concerns with that kind of processing, they came to us," said Jay Tucker, technical specialist and a retail food program evaluation officer in the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.

"At this juncture, they've started off in the smokehouse operations where products are cured and smoked-cooked," he said.

Officials at Supervalu headquarters did not wish to comment. Most of the changes at Cub simply involve fine tuning, Tucker added. "Then we helped them establish critical limits, which will be critical control points. And what are they? For example, cooling a sausage: we'd say, OK, cooling at this temperature will create this or that problem."

Next, evaluators helped to identify action steps to be taken in cases where critical limits are exceeded. "Some of it was just a case of putting things they were doing in writing for them," Tucker said.

"They had a significant amount of standard operating procedures that were part of the HACCP plan, and when they got all ideas down with some comments I had made, their management decided they should make [the standard operating procedures]

a little more user-friendly. Some of it was a little wordy, and they had some fear that it would lose credibility with career professionals."

Cub has since employed a technical writer to work on the project. Consistency is important when implementing standard procedures, according to Tucker, and the career professionals in Cub's smokehouse operations are the key.

"One neat thing at Cub is that their smokehouse operators are career operators; there's not a lot of turnover; there's one operator and that's it. We believe that's a really unique situation. "They really took the ball on this," he said. "They did come to us for assistance but they didn't want to be spoon fed. They deserve a real pat on the back for doing a great job with this. People in upper management had an insight that you don't see everywhere.

"They jumped in with both feet and made a commitment to HACCP and we feel really good about that. Overall it is working very well, and it has shown the people who have said [about HACCP] 'Oh, we don't have time for this sort of thing,' that that's a lot of hooey. Cub has proved that the benefits far surpass the initial effort required."

Due to the program's success, it is destined to become a model for other areas of the supermarket where food safety is a concern. "Their future plans are to use the vacuum-packing plan as a template in other departments," revealed Tucker. The seafood department will probably be next on the list, he added.

In fact, the chain is looking into standardizing the plan for all of its stores nationwide, according to Tucker.

"All Cub stores in Wisconsin are currently using the plan in smokehouse operations, but we haven't validated all of them yet," he said.

Wisconsin's Division of Food Safety has taken the lead in HAACP training and evaluation of retailer food safety programs. It has been highly praised by other states, Tucker told SN.

"Some states have just said 'Thou shalt not vacuum pack, period,' and we had the same thing at one time.

"We had a rule addressing vacuum packing at retail for some time, simply saying that it was forbidden unless [the retailer] got authorization [from the Division of Food Safety] but we didn't explain how to get authorization," he said.

Tucker and his colleagues came up with a new "user-friendly" 12-section guideline for Wisconsin retailers.

"It doesn't say anything different from the Food Code, it's just more fleshed out in some areas and less in others. I think here in Wisconsin we have just been a little bit different in taking it to the streets."