Quality and Food Safety

Apetito

Claire Tollit

Quality is everything for a business such as apetito. Our customers expect high quality meals, and we expect high quality ingredients. From the moment a supplier's lorry pulls up at our factory gates in Trowbridge to the time that the customer is eating their piping hot meal, we are concerned to ensure that the food remains in excellent condition. Claire Tollit is apetito's Quality Manager. She explains how quality and sustainability go hand in hand:

We have 800 different types of raw materials or ingredients arriving from 130 different suppliers. My quality team must check them against the ordered spec: quality, size and dimensions

We sample 250 meals a day, one from each pallet. We test them for taste, texture, appearance and and layout. We use a system called TAYGO - taste as you go - which is designed to pick up issues or difficulties at an early stage in production.
When occasional problems occur, we have the opportunity to put a batch on hold in our cold store. This is just one of the many benefits of frozen food, and our positive release system; it gives us total control over quality. If it is a visual rather than a safety matter we will sell the meals through our staff shop, where they will find a ready and enthusiastic market.

Claire Tollit
Quality Manager

As well as physical and taste checks on our produce, apetito verifies its standing as a sustainable food manufacturer with scientific analysis. Although faults in the meals are rare, such scarcity of problems does not lead to any reduction in the amount of testing. John Gillespie is apetito's Technical Compliance Manager and explains how the company goes well beyond regulatory obligations:

Many of our customers are vulnerable people. The average age of our meals-on-wheels consumer is 83. It is important that we are socially responsible and have robust systems in place to ensure not only that their meals are always safe, healthy and nutritious, but that we can maintain continuity of supply.

It is a terrific responsibility to think that so many people depend on us for

their daily meals. We provide the scientific back-up to complement the work of the tasters and quality checkers, using HACCP - Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point - a quality management system that is verified by the European Food Safety Inspection Service every year.
There are nine specialists in our microbiology lab who receive samples from the food batches to test for a range of harmful bacteria, such as E.coli. Until these tests have been completed our meals are quarantined. Once a batch has passed the tests, only then is it authorised as safe for distribution. This is known as the "positive release" system. Unlike our frozen product, chilled meals cannot have this advantage, as they need to be with the consumer as quickly as possible.

We presently undertake more than 10,000 microbiological tests a month. Very few batches fail to meet our stringent standards. We believe that this is because of our rigorous hygiene and quality control during production, but we can never let our guard down.

Every night, when the cooking staff leave at 10pm, the hygiene team moves into the factory. They effectively dismantle all the equipment and clean it ready for the next day's work. Their work is tested by taking swabs from surfaces and containers. No equipment or surface is released for the next day's work until it has passed the swab test.

At the end of the day not only do we have peace of mind, but more importantly so do our customers and consumers.

John Gillespie
Technical Compliance Manager

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