Print Page
Home > CSR > 2008 > Products > Food Quality & Safety
High Food Quality and Safety Standards
Food Quality
Employees place sliced product into pockets before final sealing and distribution.
Our founder, George A Hormel, was known for having high standards. In fact, one of his many quotes frequently used around our company reflects how quality and continuous improvement has been at the core of the company since 1891 — “We should constantly set the standards of achievements higher and higher; employees should strive for uniformity in quality.”
The way to guarantee that we meet our food safety responsibilities is to ensure that all our employees understand the importance of food safety, and that our safety principles are constantly supported and reinforced by management.
Food Safety Training
Hormel Foods invests substantial time and resources in developing a comprehensive training program for our employees to achieve this quality. This program starts the moment an employee is hired, and is reinforced with ongoing food safety education relevant to their job responsibilities. This training includes Hazard Analysis of Critical Control Points (HACCP) Training, Better Processing School, in-house Quality Control University and job-specific training. We also reach out and provide training to several of our key co-packers to ensure they are adhering to our strict safety standards.
We continue to develop HACCP plans to assure the safety of every product we produce is based on seven HACCP principles outlined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This includes detailed sanitation procedures and practices and involves routine audits of our HACCP and sanitation systems.
To read more information about our employee training programs, visit the safety section of this report.
Audits
All Hormel Foods and subsidiary facilities are audited for adherence to our stringent quality, food safety and sanitation programs by internal staff as well as by several third-party auditing organizations. The quality, food safety and sanitation programs of suppliers of key ingredients are also evaluated by internal staff, as well as by several third-party auditing organizations.
Sharing Best Practices with Industry Partners
Training and sound science are vital to food safety best practices. Hormel Foods shares food safety best practices with industry partners because we believe in the importance of learning from each other and improving as an industry.
For example, our foodservice sales representatives are trained on the latest food-handling procedures. This training includes the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation’s ServSafe program. This one-day training course covers topics such as cleaning/sanitizing, serving, storage procedures, purchasing ingredients, types of contamination and proper food handling techniques. To see more information related to ServSafe, visit their Web site at http://www.servsafe.com.
New Food Safety Technology
A cross-functional team of employees, including Research and Development, Quality Assurance and Engineering, from our corporate offices and plants, continues to evaluate and adopt new technologies to help ensure that we have robust food safety systems in place.
For instance, our Research and Development division generates many ideas for new procedures and technologies that enhance our food safety activities, including TrueTaste™ technology — a key process in our innovative Hormel® Natural Choice® product line, which uses High-Pressure Processing.