COMMITMENT TO FOOD SAFETY
In addition to our high quality standards, we maintain high standards for food safety. We have spent decades investing in cutting edge food safety infrastructure and practices to ensure our customers can have total confidence in the safety of our products. We don’t only hold our suppliers, manufacturers and processors accountable to these standards; we work closely with them to ensure they have the resources, equipment and training they need to ensure food safety along the entire supply chain. • Raw material declaration and inspection upon arrival to our facilities ensures unsafe ingredients do not enter our facilities. • Steam and other natural pasteurization ensures we meet food safety standards without harsh chemicals like ethylene oxide (EtO) or irradiation. • Microbiological testing detects yeast, mold, bacteria, and pathogens to be removed to meet industry standards and verify our products are safe for consumers. • Heavy Metals: Frontier Co-op adheres to the American Spice Trade Association (ASTA) recommendations. • Upon receipt, products are tested for food safety test for food safety against our internal standards, as well as pertinent compendial, regulatory, or industry-specific requirements.
Food Safety Investments with FEDECOVERA and USAID Cooperative Development Program At Frontier Co-op, we do not use harsh chemicals like ethylene oxide (EtO) or irradiation to treat or sterilize our products. Instead, we use our own or approved suppliers' validated steam pasteurization systems. In 2021, Frontier Co-op brought the value of this system to FEDECOVERA, a cooperatively owned entity made up of 33,000 farming families in Guatemala that provides business capacity and support services to its cooperative members. For many years, FEDECOVERA has handled product processing and export for many of its members but, prior to 2021, did not have the knowledge or capa- bility to perform valuable secondary processing such as steam pasteurization, grinding and sterile handling. With the support of USAID’s Cooperative Devel- opment Program (CDP), Frontier Co-op and FED- ECOVERA co-invested capital into infrastructure and workforce capacity to implement steam pasteur- ization, grinding and sterile handling processes. This brought greater market access to FEDECOVERA’s members and ensured the additional value provided by these services to buyers was kept at source. To support these improvements, an international expert from Mexico visited the team to lead training, in Spanish, on high-level food safety principles, good manufacturing practices, contamination control and pest management – training which further ensured compliance with internationally recognized food safety requirements.
Photo: With the help of Frontier Co-op and USAID Cooperative Development Program, FEDECOVERA has validated their in-house steam pasteurization system.
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