HOUSTON, Minn. — With regulations coming out to ensure food safety, the Farmers Co-op Elevator in Houston has made a commitment to meet them.
FCE recently received Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point certification, which will ensure closer tracking of its feed mill products from beginning to end.
"You have to track the feed from where it comes from to what farm it goes to," said FCE safety coordinator Rich Fravel. "There's more paperwork now, you have to know what semi it came out of, which bin it went into, so we know exactly where the feed was in the process."
To meet the certification, mill employees had to get caught up on standard operating procedures that they need to follow.
Fravel said that was what took the most time.
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"It's just like baking, it's a process," he said. "We had to look at what could go wrong and how we could prevent it from going wrong, have a written plan for the employees to get trained on to follow the same steps in the mixing process."
FCE also had to install new software for tracking purposes.
"We put in a new computer system called Feed Mill Manager," said feed division manager Rod Torgerson. "It tracks lot numbers all the way from the mixing facility to the farm delivery."
Receiving HAACP certification will help FCE meet the requirements of the Food Safety Modernization Act, the Public Health Security Bio-terrorism Preparedness and Response Act and the Veterinary Feed Directive. This covers making sure antibiotics are used judiciously.
Operations at FCE's Rushford mill have moved to Houston, which now runs two production shifts. The Rushford Town and Country Store is still open. Rushford's older mill would have cost too much to bring up to HACCP standards.
Above all, the key is safety for all parties.
"Most feed mills are looked at as food processing plants now," said Torgerson. "Safe feed equals safe food. Consumers are more interested in knowing where their food came from, so this is a way we can step it up and track it. They just want more information."
