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Testimonials:

"Thanks, Mike, we really appreciate that. Thanks to you we are now a Certified Plant producing safe food. Good job." - Myles Hamilton, Vice President Spitz International Inc. Bow Island, AB

"We were required to have a Certified GMP/HACCP PLan for one of our really big customers. Mike had performed a GAP analysis for us and we asked him to write a GMP Manual, work on our forms and write our SSOPs and SOPs. He trained the entire staff in HACCP and also trained our in-house HACCP Coordinator. It took a while as we changed the plant around, but Mike go the job done and when he said we were ready, he arranged for a third party auditor from NSF/ISR to perform the 2-day certification audit. We passed with only two minor corrective actions to close out. We are really happy with Mike's performance, he certainly put in a lot of work". Dave Shields, Production Manager, Spitz International Inc. Bow Island, AB

"Our business has really picked up since you prepared our GMP HACCP Plan and arranged for the successful third party audit by SGS Canada Inc".  Tim Baer, Manager, New Rosedale Colony

Mission Statement

Ceres Quality Systems will provide auditing and consulting services to food and feed manufacturers in an efficient manner to enable them to be Certified in the production of safe food and feed.

On-Farm HACCP

Ceres Quality Systems On-Farm Food Safety Program

During the course of the 3rd Party HACCP audit at one of our clients, one of the opportunities for improvement that the auditor recommended was the company implement a system of food safety at the farm level.

I had discussed this with the client's management previously and he said he would probably ask me to design a simple but effective system. Obviously, to preserve food and feed safety integrity, the raw ingredient, seeds and grains, must be safe to eat, and demonstrated to be safe before being delivered to the food or feed processing facility.

In the winter of 2005, I was hired by the Canada Grains Council to audit a pilot project,  "On-Farm Food Safety". I was requested to visit 6 farms in Alberta whose owners had been picked as representing top producers by a large grain company. It was obvious from talking to these growers during these audits that in order to get them onside, the program had to be as simple as possible.

Basically it's all about:

• records,
• good production practices,
• safe storage of seed,
• chemical use and storage,
• seed treating,
• inspection and cleaning of trucks, 
• equipment cleaning
• and inspection of bins and yardsite. 

One thing did emerge, is that the growers must be visited one-on-one to ensure they understand the program in the initial stages and help them fill out the forms. That was obvious when I conducted the 2005 audits.

I am prepared to train the growers in “On-Farm Food Safety” and conduct meetings to explain why this is necessary.

So I am in the process of designing a farmer friendly, practical, On-Farm Food Safety Plan and Producer Manual for food and feed companies to ensure that the food and feed coming to the plants and mills is safe and traceable.

With recent developments such as Maple Leaf’s listeria disaster and the US Peanut scandal,  food and feed companies' customers will insist that their suppliers can guarantee that they have control of food and feed safety from the seeding of the crop and have auditable data to back that up. The demand for On-Farm Food Safety is customer-driven and it is here, now.

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