SafetySAFETY
By Glenda Kemp, Quality Assurance Manager
We always had a garden when I was growing up and late summer afternoons often found the whole family working in the garden picking strawberries, cucumbers and fresh tomatoes. I loved picking and shucking corn and it was a real treat when it was time to dig potatoes since it gave everyone a good excuse to just dig and play in the dirt.
Even as an adult my parents continued to farm and rarely was there a trip to their home that I left empty handed. Fresh produce, like many other things in life, was something I took for granted. Because it had been so readily available my whole life, it was never really missed until my parents were no longer physically able to tend a garden.
Funny thing about life. After my parents supplied me with so many handpicked fresh vegetables for almost 50 years, seldom does a week pass that I don't take fresh produce straight from our warehouse to my widowed father. I really like doing that for him and he has come to expect it.
The recent outbreaks of the e-coli in spinach or the salmonella-tainted tomatoes have raised the safety standards in the fresh produce industry. Our wholesale customers expect us to buy produce from growers who are regulated and who have passed stringent safety standards.
Farmer Brown certainly has good intentions but does he know what causes e. coli or salmonella and how to prevent the chance of it being in his garden and on his produce?
As the Quality Assurance Manager of A&A Produce and it's newly-formed subsidiary, A&A Produce On The Go, it is my job to see that our produce is as safe as we can possibly provide. Every person affiliated with A&A Produce On The Go realizes the responsibility we have for the health and well being of the public who eats our produce.
You and your family may rest assured we do everything humanly possible to make sure your produce has passed every level of safety. We go way beyond the minimal standards of food safety for fresh produce.
We have unannounced inspections by the South Carolina Department of Agriculture twice a year and have always received excellent reports.
We've always prided ourselves on maintaining a clean and odor-free refrigerated facility and would gladly give a tour to any potential customer who came to our door. These days when anyone opens the door they are on camera since our facilities are monitored inside and out 24 hours a day 7 days a week. We still will give a tour of our facilities after a person has registered by signing in, providing a photo ID if we don't personally know them, wear a "GUEST ID" or "VISITOR ID" and are personally guided by one of our staff.
To become more educated in food safety, to further prove our standards, and to know we were doing everything possible to make sure our produce is as safe as possible we elected & paid a handsome price to be inspected by an independent third party inspector. ASI is the inspector for many nationally recognized companies including Wal-Mart, Kraft, Tyson Foods and Nestle. The inspectors usually have a Ph. D in Food Science and the bar is set pretty high. Our inspector spent an entire day just looking through our documentation and going through our warehouse, coolers and the grounds with a fine-tooth comb. ASI rated our facilities, our cleanliness, our pest control program, our policies and procedures, and our safety measures on our first inspection as Excellent with a score of 97.4%. Download Report.
We also elected to become more knowledgeable about, to be in compliance with, and to register under the BioTerrorism Act of 2002.
We elected to register with the United States Department of Agricultural to notify us immediately of any recalls. However, having the inside tract with the nation%u2019s leading produce growers and brokers we are notified of a possible problem well before the USDA announces it.
We elected to form a Recall Team who has been tested and is capable of notifying every customer within minutes of a recall for a product they purchased from us.
We elected to become HACCP certified. HACCP stands for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points and is a system to assure food safety. (Pillsbury Company invented and applied the HACCP concept to food in the early 1960s in order to supply safe food for the U.S. space program.)
We elect to make it mandatory that all delivery personnel wear A&A uniforms and have an A&A photo identification.
We elect to place a seal on every box of produce we deliver retail so you may know it hasn't been tampered with.
We elect to give a 24-hour 100% guarantee.
A&A On The Go produce is delivered directly to A&A Company's warehouse in most cases directly from the fields. It is distributed in the same inspected refrigerated A&A Produce trucks that have dotted the roads and back doors of the Grand Strand's best restaurants since 2002. Every shipment we receive is checked for internal product temperature upon arrival at our loading dock. The temperature of our coolers is computer monitored 24 hours a day 7 days a week. If the temperature varies outside an acceptable range we are electronically notified immediately. Every box of produce leaving our warehouse being delivered to you will be stored under refrigeration, shipped to you in a refrigerated truck and delivered in a specially designed insulated box with an additional coolant pack to assure our products remain in quality condition until you place them in your refrigerator up to six hours later.
Having learned what I have learned in the years of owning a produce company, I now know why I never was enticed by the roadside produce stands where the produce was sitting out in the hot sunshine often surrounded by a few flies.
