Congratulations on successfully opening your store, completing your build out, hiring staff, training, marketing, and developing social media to generate a loyal following of customers. You may be wondering What is next?, How can we expand your bottom line/enhance revenue?, or How can we expand our store footprint to reach new audiences? Naturally, you are thinking the next likely goal is to expand your product reach. How better to accomplish this than distributing your products to local restaurants and markets to carry or feature your products.
Before you call on the restaurants and regional retail outlets to distribute your products or begin researching new packaging, be sure you have the resources and infrastructure in place to meet this exciting opportunity. A Master List of procedures to have in place for your existing business can help ensure you grow your business safely. While you may not have the resources of a large corporation, industry and academia has rallied together to support this artisan demand by creating www.safeicecream.org.
This website houses ALL the tools you need in one place! In addition, an online training course, which contains the essential information you will need has been developed. This course allows you can go at your own pace, whenever convenient for you, jump around between relevant chapters and return to re-review at any time! The first step is to use this food safety program checklist and one of the self-audit templates provided below to help you take a deeper look at your facility with food safety in mind. This exercise will help you assess risks to your current product/business related to pathogens, allergens, and extraneous materials. Once completed, you can identify which areas to focus your efforts on for further education and how to properly develop documentation systems. Click on each of the headings to access tools, educational videos, and templates around each topic. You are not alone. Additional resources and support personnel are here to assist you. They are just a click or phone call away.
Wishing You Much Success as You Grow Your Business Safely.
Download the checklist here.
Download self-audit templates here:
A national dairy food safety support effort is up and running to support artisan dairy producers – cheese, yogurt, milk, ice cream, cultured products, and other dairy-based foods – in their pursuit of reviewing, implementing, and improving their food safety practices. This work is accomplished through coaching workshops designed to help Artisan’s distill food safety regulation and develop food safety plans specific to their businesses, access to food safety experts for consultations on food safety questions and access to online resources for food safety education and food safety plan development. For one-on-one ice cream food safety consultation and plan review assistance contact dairyfoodsafetycoach@cornell.edu or call 315-787-2699
Access and purchase the Ice Cream and Frozen Desserts Labeling Manual (2019 Edition)
Access food safety procedures and documents to support Good Manufacturing Practices and Policies.
Together with the Center for Dairy Research and Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association leads the Dairy Food Safety Alliance, a group designed to deliver the latest in food safety news to dairy product manufacturers, processors, and their suppliers. The Alliance features FSMA compliant standard operating procedures and record keeping templates for dairy product manufacturers, processors, and suppliers.
User-friendly tools and templates in this section were contributed by existing ice cream manufacturers to provide access to commonly used forms you can implement in your food safety plan to make your day-to-day operations safer.
“Controlling Pathogens in Dairy Processing Environments Guidance: Guidance for the US Dairy Industry” provides best practices for controlling Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes, and Cronobacter sakazakii and builds upon “Control of Listeria monocytogenes: Guidance for the U.S Dairy Industry” that was issued in 2016. The “Control of Listeria monocytogenes: Guidance for the U.S Dairy Industry” focuses on best practices for controlling Listeria monocytogenes. Both guidance documents follow a simple graphic to share knowledge and help establish effective pathogen controls in a dairy manufacturing facility. The “Control of Listeria monocytogenes: Guidance for the U.S Dairy Industry” is also available in a Spanish language version.
ServeSafe allows participants to earn nationally-accredited food safety certification from the National Restaurant Association. Learn about foodborne illness, how to prevent it and how to train employees in food sanitation. Choose from several online, classroom and language options
The U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) publishes the Food Code, that assists in food control by providing scientifically sound technical and legal basis for regulating restaurants and grocery stores and institutions such as nursing homes. Resources are posted to help establishments train employees on health and hygiene and ensure they are meeting safe food handling guidelines .
Access the Dairy Practices Council educational guidelines which contain practical, timely information about sanitation, procedures, and general good practices that relate to the dairy farm and dairy manufacturing facilities. For a catalog of resources for purchase follow this link.
The Guide to FDA Inspections & Preparing for a Recall is intended to help dairy companies understand their rights and obligations with respect to FDA requirements and inspections, as well as those of the agency’s inspectors. The 74-page publication is arranged in two parts. Part I includes a quick guide to FDA inspections, background information and guidelines regarding requests for records, samples and post-inspection procedures. Part II covers general information on recalls, how to develop a recall plan and details on the Reportable Food Registry. Each part contains sample forms and exhibits for quick reference. The guide is available for purchase from the IDFA website.
We have all seen news coverage of food recalls that demonstrate how important it is for the dairy industry to speak with one voice when food safety is called into question. The entire industry can be impacted by the way one entity responds. This Crisis Preparedness Toolkit for Dairy Processing Companies was developed to provide a template to develop or expand your company’s crisis plan, help your company prepare for public perception crises related to your product and further the dairy industry’s overall crisis preparedness by uniting the industry with complementary plans.
This handbook is intended to provide general guidance on how environmental monitoring may serve as either validation or verification of specific prerequisite programs (e.g., sanitation and sanitary equipment design) or may be more generally seen as a strategy to monitor the environment for unhygienic conditions.
This resource center is a collaboration between the following industry and trade associations:
Food Safety Questions? Contact dairyfoodsafetycoach@cornell.edu
Questions or suggestions? Contact us at questions@safeicecream.org.
