Product Analysis
Meeting our Customer’s Expectations, without Failure is our Goal.
The quality of our products is paramount, second only to the safety of our food. Food Safety and Food Quality are often spoken and written in the same context as both are very important to us. Meeting our customer’s expectations, without failure is our goal. We take great pride in the quality of our products from initiation through commercialization.
As with all natural processes, natural variation does occur and we strive to control this variation within the limits set by our product specifications. We analyze our raw ingredients, products in process, and then again the finished product for key quality attributes to assure no product is sold until we prove it meets expectations and safety first.
We have testing laboratories in all three of our production facilities that perform the key analyses on-site where the product is made. This is by design to deliver to our customers the freshest product possible, as expediently as possible with the assurance that it is safe and of the quality expected and paid for.
Our laboratories are subdivided into three separate divisions:
1) Product Review
Where the products are evaluated for organoleptic attributes and performance.
2) Chemistry
Where the products are sampled and tested for their chemical/physical properties including: (a) pH, (b) %Moisture, (c) %Fat, (d) %Brix/refractive index, (e) %Salt by titration, (f) Viscosity, (g) Color as measured by a Hunter Lab colorimeter, (h) titratable acidity, (i) Weight, (j), texture via penetrometer, and (k) pillow pouch burst strength.
3) Microbiology
Where each batch of product produced are sampled and analyzed for microbial load and pathogen indicator organisms to assure food safety from biological hazards. Here we test for standard aerobic plate count, Total coliforms/E.coli, Salmonella species, Listeria species, Staphylococcus species, and total yeasts & molds.