Food safety
Our policy
Every product that leaves our chain must be of the same high level of quality. This obviously applies to both food and feed products. It is the basic standard that buyers and consumers set for us as food producers. Food safety and the safeguarding of food safety therefore have our utmost attention.
Transparency and traceability
We are committed to ensuring chain transparency and traceable product information.
With Safety Guard, the VanDrie Group's quality system, every link in the chain can provide the guarantees demanded worldwide. Whether it is about what happens in calf husbandry, during the production of animal feed or at meat processing companies – Safety Guard standards are applied everywhere. This quality system is based on ISO 22000. Also by 2022, various subsidiaries of the VanDrie Group had also achieved GMP+, BRC, IFS and ISO14001 certifications, among others. Vitaal Kalf (Vital Veal) is the quality system of the Dutch veal sector. This quality system includes rules for hygiene, calf health, animal welfare, feed quality, medicine use and registration. The veal farmers the VanDrie Group works with must comply with Vitaal Kalf. They are checked for these requirements by the independent The Foundation for Quality Guarantee of the Veal Sector (SKV). The SKV also carries out sampling and visual inspections of veal farmers and the meat processing companies to guarantee that veal is produced without the use of undesirable growth-promoting substances. With Safety Guard and Vitaal Kalf together, we can ensure quality throughout the production chain.
ISO22000 is an international food safety standard designed with the aim of providing consumers with safe food. The standard states that companies must continuously update and improve their food safety management system.
GMP+ stands for ‘Good Manufacturing Practice’. In concrete terms, this means that the GMP+ standard defines from A to Z how a safe animal feed product is composed, produced and its compliance assured.
BRC is a food safety standard developed in 1998 by the British Retail Consortium, the UK trade association for retailers. The standard sets requirements for the HACCP system, quality management, production and process facilities, food defence and employee training. The standard is recognised by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI). GFSI is a business initiative for the continuous improvement of food safety management systems. GFSI's main activity is to benchmark management systems.
IFS is also known as the German/French counterpart of the English BRC standard. The standard is also recognised by the GFSI.
ISO14001 is the standard for environmental management. It requires companies to develop appropriate environmental policies and ensure their implementation.
Unique traceability system
A unique aspect of Safety Guard is its traceability system. We use this to keep track of exactly which raw materials are incorporated into animal feed, where they come from and which farms the batches of animal feed go to. The calves have unique ear tag numbers that are always linked to the animal. This enables us to know at which farm the animal was born and kept. The unique code remains linked to the products in the meat processing companies. This allows each individual piece of meat to be traced back to an individual ingredient in the animal feed for example.
Controls, monitoring and internal audits
Our companies are regularly or daily inspected by national governmental organisations, such as in the Netherlands by the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA). The meat-producing companies are subject to ongoing supervision by veterinarians from the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA). In addition, self-appointed internal auditors, through an established programme, conduct internal audits of animal feed and meat-producing subsidiary organisations by means of a clearly defined programme. A comprehensive three-year training plan for these auditors was adopted in 2022. In this way, the knowledge and skills of the auditors are kept up to date in a structured way in order to contribute towards the continuous improvement process.
HACCP
Hygiene is a crucial factor in meat production. Products of animal origin inevitably contain microorganisms. It is up to us to ensure that our practice is set up to achieve the standards in this regard. Our meat-producing companies therefore work on the basis of HACCP. HACCP stands for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points. It is a food risk assessment. The companies have all identified and listed potential hazards and indicated real hazards. To this end, critical management points (CCPs) have been identified. These are points in the process where the risk can be prevented, eliminated or reduced to an acceptable level. For each CCP, the critical boundaries are indicated and how these boundaries are monitored. Corrective actions have also been recorded. These are taken if monitoring shows that a CCP is not sufficiently controlled. Verification is applied to periodically determine whether the HACCP approach is effective. Documentation and records are kept of all verification activities.
In practical terms, the HACCP approach monitors, for example, the delivery of clean animals, the use of clean knives and equipment, proper sterilisation, the good personal hygiene of employees, intensive cleaning of production areas and prevention of condensation. We monitor our efforts to demonstrate our compliance. This involves taking many samples of the products and environment. We also take samples of carcasses to test for the presence of E-coli or salmonella, for example.
Labora
Part of the VanDrie Group is Labora, an independent and service-oriented laboratory, which is ISO 17025 accredited and specialises in chemical and microbiological research. Labora carries out investigations on behalf of producers, suppliers and traders of raw materials and foods, and for the VanDrie Group production companies. This is how we make our guarantees truly demonstrable.
Zoonosis
Zoonoses are diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans or vice versa. A zoonosis can be transmitted in several ways, namely via direct contact, via the air (splashes, aerosols or via dust particles), via contact with body fluids (blood, mucus, urine, faeces, uterine fluids), via indirect contact (via contaminated objects, doorknobs, instruments or dung) and via insects and parasites, such as flies, mosquitoes and ticks. Moreover, infections can occur after eating meat, raw milk (products), eggs, for example.
Zoonoses are caused by different types of pathogens, such as bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites. The animals or humans do not have to be sick themselves; they can also carry the pathogen and therefore still cause infection to others. With regard to the transmission of infections from calves to humans, we examine each stage in the production process to determine where those hazards pose the greatest risk and measures are then taken. These can be zoonotic diseases, such as some E. Colis, Salmonella, Listeria, MRSA and ringworm.
Heating
Most of the raw materials used undergo a heating step before or during the production of milk substitutes. Zoonoses do not survive this heating step. This minimised the risk of zoonoses being transmitted through milk substitutes. The risk of zoonotic contamination from other feeds, such as muesli, is also very low. Muesli has a high dry matter content, as a result of which any zoonoses cannot or can hardly grow or spread. Through Safety Guard, we carry out investigations on raw materials and end products to eliminate risks.
Hygiene measures
The use of hygiene locks is essential at the farm, as are other hygiene measures by veal farmers and others entering the livestock shed, such as vets. We expressly advise good personal hygiene: washing hands after coming into contact with calves and/or manure, as well as wearing clean industrial clothing. In addition, pest control is essential, not only to minimise the risk of barn fires but, above all, to prevent these animals transmitting diseases.
Temperature control
Within the meat processing link, we ensure that the temperature of the veal is kept under control by applying automatic temperature control in the cold storage units and a closed cold chain is observed all the way to the customer or consumer. Customers are advised to heat the meat products well before consumption.
Recalls
One indicator to determine whether meat products and animal feed have been produced responsibly and safely is the number of recalls (the recall of products by a supplier). In 2022, 12 recalls occurred in our chain. Of these recalls, 5 occurred at our animal feed producing and selling companies. Due to timely intervention based, among other things, on sound risk assessments, no risks to animal or human health or welfare occurred in these recalls.
Seven recalls occurred within our meat processing companies. In the case of these recalls, meat was recalled due to a (possible) violation of food safety standards. Due to the properly-functioning tracking and tracing system, the recalls were of limited size and it was possible to get in touch with customers quickly. At meat processing companies, there has been little scope since last year to carry out risk assessments and, based on these, to assess whether a recall is necessary or not. Tightening of the policy of the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority underlies this. A breach of a standard, even if a risk analysis would show that there is no risk to food safety, such as in the case of administrative matters, for example, therefore leads to a recall more often than before.
Inspection results NVWA
Our Dutch meat processing companies, Ameco, ESA, Ekro and T. Boer & zn are under permanent supervision of the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA). This means constant inspections on important issues such as animal welfare or hygienic work are in place. In addition to this permanent supervision, The NVWA carries out inspections (a total of 10,159 for the aforementioned companies) and publishes its data publicly on its own website. We see over 2022 that the four companies comply by as much as 99.77%. To a large degree the demands made upon us are met. Ensuring animal welfare in our meat processing companies is a serious matter for us. Nevertheless, one deficiency was found in 2022 that is finable under the Animals Act.
This mainly looks at hygienic practices such as not ensuring the supply of clean animals from primary farms. Additional measures have been taken in response to this, such as the shearing of contaminated animals on the farm. We remain committed to continuous quality improvement, both on the farms and in our chain. Ensuring safe and good production is one of our top priorities.