Food Safety and Quality Policy

Purpose. Sets out the commitment of Southern Cross to produce meat and meat products that are safe, wholesome, correctly described and traceable, and the framework through which that commitment is met.

1.Policy statement

Southern Cross will produce meat and meat products that are safe to eat, fit for their intended purpose and truthfully described. The business will operate an Approved Arrangement based on HACCP principles that meets the Australian Standard for the Hygienic Production and Transportation of Meat and Meat Products for Human Consumption and the requirements of every importing country listed on the establishment registration. Food safety takes priority over throughput on every shift.

2.Scope

This policy applies to every person who enters a production, storage or loadout area at any Southern Cross site, including employees, labour hire workers, contractors, visitors and auditors. It covers all product streams from livestock receival through to despatch, including edible offal, co-products and product processed under service kill arrangements.

3.Responsibilities

The General Manager is accountable for providing the resources needed to meet this policy. The Quality Assurance Manager must maintain the Approved Arrangement, the HACCP plan and the verification program. Department managers must ensure work instructions are followed and that non-conformances are reported the same shift. Every worker must follow hygiene, sanitation and quality requirements and must stop and report any product that is contaminated, out of temperature or wrongly labelled.

• General Manager: resources and review
• Quality Assurance Manager: Approved Arrangement and verification
• Department managers: work instructions and reporting
• All workers: hygiene, reporting and stopping unsafe product

4.Critical control points

The HACCP plan identifies critical control points at hide removal and evisceration (zero tolerance for faecal, ingesta and milk contamination), carcase chilling, boning room product temperature, metal detection and carton temperature at loadout. Each critical control point has a documented limit, a monitoring frequency, a corrective action and a verification activity. Monitoring records must be completed in the QA monitoring system at the time of the check.

5.Product description and traceability

Every carton must carry a label that truthfully states the species, cut, grade, weight, packed date and establishment number equivalent used in this simulated workplace. Product must be traceable one step back to the livestock consignment and one step forward to the customer order. Trade descriptions must use AUS-MEAT language and, where applicable, Meat Standards Australia grades.

6.Non-conformance and continuous improvement

Any deviation from a critical limit, specification or work instruction must be recorded on a Non-Conformance Report and the affected product must be placed on hold until QA releases it. Trends in non-conformances, Meat Hygiene Assessment results and customer complaints will be reviewed at the monthly quality meeting and used to update work instructions and training.

7.Review

This policy will be reviewed annually, after any regulatory change, after any product recall and after any external audit that identifies a major non-conformance. The Quality Assurance Manager will present the review to the General Manager for approval.