Quality First

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Submitted by Editor on Mon, 12/28/2009 - 15:15
Food Safety
We are living in a time when the rapid globalization is gaining speed on almost every things. We use foods not only processed in our country, but imported from many others.  More and more processed products imported from overseas are used in our daily life, and many products from our countries are beeing used by other peoples. This is quite differrent from the way our parents or grand parents used to.
 
Modern users are aware of the benefits and risks a food may have. They are aware of dangerous epidemics happened in the world such as mad cows, bird flue, fishery products contaminated with heavy metals or dangerous or banned substances. They also confront with a possible new risk: bio-terrorism coming with their foods.
 
The strict control of possible risks whether physical, biological, chemical or social in nature is important to ensure that foods supplied to final users are safe. This requires a workable quality control system suitable to particular environments and conditions of individual packer. Sea Minh Hai is awared of the importance of such  system and has tried its best to set up a quality management system throughout its processing and business operations to ensure the products are always safe for users.
 
1. Conformance to Viet Nam's law and regulations on food safety
a.  Compliance to Viet Nam regulations
Being a food processor, Sea Minh Hai strictly conform to all requirements required by Viet Nam government and Ministry of Fishery and other related bodies. The law applied to the industry such as Viet Nam Standard TCVN: 3726 – 1989, TCVN 4381 – 1992, TCVN 4380 – 1992..., the Viet Nam Law on Fishery (2003), related decrees or regulation are all followed.
 
2. Conformance to buyer's legal regulations: USA, Japan, EU..
Although each nation has its own regulations in food quality, safety,  or human aspects, mostly these are generally common in nature. For examples, microbiological standards for foods are nearly similar. We present here some requirements for US markets.
 
- Conformance to USFDA HACCP requirement: Final  mandatory law is decided on December 18, 1995 for fishery products safety and sanitatjon. Latest mandatory date for fishery processing firms to set up its own HACCP plan is December 12, 1997. Although Sea Minh Hai's main market at that time is not the US, we had taken part in training courses and has developed our own HACCP plan with the help of SIRED and NAFIQACEN since 1997 and applied it in our factoy (Factory 78). This HACCP analysis covered all required aspects (physical, biological and chemical)
 
- GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) and SSOP (Sanitation Standard Operating Procedure) are also set up and applied at the same time with the HACCP system. Eight required key points are all included in the factory's SSOP:
 
    1. Safety of  water used in food processing in factory
    2. Conditions and cleanliness of food contact surfaces
    3. Prevention of cross contamination
    4. Maintenance of hand washing, hand sanitizing, and toilet facilities;
    5. Protection of food, food packaging material, and food contact surfaces from adulteration with lubricants, fuel, pesticides, cleaning compounds, sanitizing agents, condensate, and other chemical, physical, and biological contaminants;
    6. Proper labeling, storage, and use of toxic compounds;
    7. Control of employee health conditions that could result in the microbiological contamination of food, food packaging materials, and food contact surfaces; and
    8. Exclusion of pests from the food plant. 
  
- Other requirement for food processing facilities
The event of November 11th, 2001 requires a total revision of security measures, and the "Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 (the Bioterrorism Act)" had been passed by the Congress and was signed into law June 12, 2002 by President Bush. This consists of five titles
  • Title I - National Preparedness for Bioterrorism and Other Public Health Emergencies
  • Title II - Enhancing Controls on Dangerous Biological Agents and Toxins
  • Title III- Protecting Safety and Security of Food and Drug Supply
  • Title IV: Drinking Water Security and Safety
  • Title V- Additional Provisions
Title III of this law directly addresses to food and divided into two subpart: subpart A for food supply protection and subpart B for drug supply protection. Some requirements set out for subpart A are:
  • Section 303: Administrative detention when there is evidence that the goods is dangerous for human health.
  • Section 305:  Registration of food facilities. It requires factilities owners, operator or its representatives in the US and abroad to register their facilities with FDA not later than December 12, 2003. .
  • Section 306: Establish and maintain records: This required food facility to establish and maintain record to help to recognize one previous level source and one next receiver. Food processor, packers, transportation companies, distribution and importer all are required to set up and maintain the records.
  • Section 307: Prio notice of shipment to the US
Sea Minh Hai registered its four facilities with US FDA with current codes for Factory 78 as 17679679830, for Factory 69- Workshop I as 19936214810, Factory 69- Workshop III as 17974857160 and its newest facility Lang Tram Seafoods as 14767358672.
Production records and their maintenance conform to requirements, SIMP data timely updated and submitted, a workable HACCP system for each factory is always maintained.
Food security measures against bio-terrorism are set up with appropriate procedures in the factory to ensure foods coming out from our facilities are always safe.
 
3. Third Party's Audits at Buyers' Requests
Besides conforming to government requirements we have to satisfy our buyer when there is particular requirement requested. These may be policy on enviroment, social responsibility etc. We are visited by varioius third party auditors to check our conditions on these matters and with much effort we can satisfy the request of important partners. Among these are social audit by Intertek, food safety audits by Cook and Thurber, FAI, SGS....
 
3. Commitment in continuous improving
Food quality and buyers requirements are continuously studied and improved through users' information received and other channels. We have set up and applied the 9001:2000 ISO system and has been certified by SGS recently. This proves our commitment to quality improving.

4. Laboraty analysis

Products are strictly controlled and analyzed in various aspects such as physical, microbiological, chemical, sensual. An important part of this analysis is done by laboratory, using both internal and third party labs.

Our internal lab can make analysis on basic microbiology. We can check total plate count, coliform, shigella, salmonella, anti-biotics of Nitrofuran and their derivatives. Third party laboratory is used in checking microbiolgy that our internal lab cannot detect, or when chalenge test is carried out.

Laboratory analyis is done based on a general plan with frequency and ratio suitable for particular product or sanitation condition. Results are recorded and informed to related sections for improvement or correction when problems found.

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