Food Safety
The business offices of The Flavor Tree Fruit Company, LLC are located on-site at the state-of-the-art cherry packing facilities of Warmerdam Packing in Hanford, California. Food Safety has become the culture of Warmerdam Packing, and the facility has a long history of complying with the strictest global requirements of the cherry industry, and with recent improvements to the stonefruit packing line and full incorporation of stonefruit orchards into our internationally recognized GAP program, The Flavor Tree Fruit Company will be on the top tier of food safety in San Joaquin Valley.
It all begins with a plan. In 2010, the packing company and the marketing company have initiated a Quality Management System incorporating good agricultural practices, good manufacturing practices and hazard analysis and critical control point management. The packing company will be third-party audited against it’s Quality Management System in the Spring of 2010. NSF-Davis Fresh conducted the last HACCP audit on the packing facility in 2009, and the results of that audit are openly distributed to our customers.
In the spring of 2010, The Flavor Tree Fruit Company will be launching its interactive website for quality control and food safety data for easy access for our customers. Private logins will guard food safety documentation as well as lot reports, shipment reports and quality information for each of our customers profiles.
All of the Warmerdam’s Sequoia® cherry fields are GlobalG.A.P. certified as of 2009. In the year 2010, the entire crop production of Warmerdam’s farming unit Excelsior Farming will be audited to GlobalG.A.P. standards (including peaches, nectarines and any and all cherry varieties). Outside growers must comply with good agricultural practices, and only growers fruit compliant with customer’s requirements will be shipped to those customers. We will not accept fruit from growers without an implemented food safety plan.
Our state-of-the-art packing facility contains millions of dollars of the most advanced computerized optical sorting equipment, mostly powered by over eight million dollars worth of solar panels high above, all contained in a building designed with food safety in mind. Currently our packing house is one of few in the United States certified to the stringent FIELD-TO-FORK scheme from global retailer Marks and Spencer, based in London, England. During cherry season, we maintain a large team of third-party quality control personnel with oversight of our cherry operation, as well as our own food safety and quality control manager.