Advantage Traceability Profile: Amco Produce Inc.Traceability Helps Company Earn Customer TrustWhat does it take to produce a perfect vine-ripened tomato? For Leamington-based Amco Produce Inc., the secret is the right blend of nature and technology. Alongside sophisticated heating systems and computer-controlled drip irrigation snaking through the company's 60 acres of greenhouses, you'll see bumblebees hard at work pollinating the crops, while other insects provide natural pest control, eliminating the need for pesticides. The result is consistently firm, flavourful and richly hued vegetables - hand-picked beefsteak tomatoes, cluster tomatoes, red, yellow and orange peppers, and seedless cucumbers - that keep Amco's customers across North America coming back for more. Amco Produce Installed:
Figure 1: Fausto Amicone, President
of Amco Produce Inc. Now, the company
has added traceability technology to their recipe for success. Traceability
is designed to help growers and processors track information about
everything from raw materials to the finished product and then link
that information to the end retailer.
For Amco, it took the company's existing food safety program to a new level, creating the ability to carry out recalls or product verification, which in turn increases customers' confidence in their products. "At the end of the day, showing the customer that all of our practices are safe and traceable eliminates their headaches. It just helps them," says Sheri Cormier, Amco's Operations Assistant. Amco now applies a bar code to each box of tomatoes and pallet
tags all skids picked and shipped from their facility. This bar
code links the packed tomatoes to the region of the greenhouse from
which they were picked and the date of picking so that all produce
can be easily and quickly tracked back to the source if necessary. One of the keys was creating a well-defined and searchable system, says Cormier. "We want to make sure that - heaven forbid - if we ever need to have a recall, we can narrow it down to a certain area in our facility. If we had to close down the whole facility, we'd be in trouble," she explains. The Famous software system is a critical component of the traceability system, as all information from planting, to picking, to shipping is recorded in this database. Before implementing the Famous software, all greenhouse operations were tracked using paper forms filed in a binder. To track a specific day's picking and identify the customers it was shipped to would have taken hours or even days. Today Amco can identify and recall product quickly with a few simple keystrokes. "We can trace a product right back to the area where it was picked and on what day. It's pretty amazing," says Cormier. Employees have played a huge part in Amco's traceability success. Not only have they caught on quickly, they're actually pushing the process forward. "A lot of our guys had never looked at a computer when this first came in. Now I'm giving them handheld computers and they're turning around and saying, 'Hey, why don't you do the pallet tags this way?' To see some employees grasp it and run with it changes everybody's mentality," she says. The company also hired a new full-time food safety coordinator who monitors the traceability system in the facility on a daily basis and helps the company achieve new tracking goals, such as expanding the barcode labeling of every box to other packing lines in the facility. Amco also plans to take traceability one step further by labeling individual vegetables. It's a move designed to benefit consumers, Cormier says, allowing each tomato and pepper to be traced back to the location in the greenhouse it was picked, the time, date, and even the person who picked it. "At the end of the day, the consumer does not buy the whole case. They buy the one tomato out of the box," she explains. The more information they can give on that one tomato, she says, the more effective the company's traceability system can be. It's all part of Amco's commitment to do whatever it takes to earn customer trust. "This is where the industry is going. Everybody wants to be sure what they're getting at home is safe, and they want us to send that message to them," says Cormier. "We've always got our customers in mind." Traceability brings benefits:By implementing a traceability system, Amco Produce:
"We can trace a product right back to
the location in the greenhouse where it was picked and on what day.
It's pretty amazing."
- Sheri Cormier, Amco Operations Assistant
Funding for the Food Safety Initiative Traceability Grant Program and Pilot Project was provided under the Agriculture Policy framework, a federal-provincial-territorial initiative. For more information: |
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