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What type(s) of preservatives are used?
Absolutely NONE - all product is packed
fresh, ready to eat, and vacuum sealed.
What's the shelf-life of the salads?
7 - 10 days
How are the salads packed/shipped?
Typically, in 5# bags, in 20# boxes ( 4
bags per box.) Packing can be customized to
meet your needs.
Once an order has been placed, how soon
can it be ready?
Because these are fresh salads, our
crew needs a lead time of at least 2 days.
Nicho Produce adheres to all local and state
health codes. In addition, we are the only salad
processing center in the Rio Grande Valley that is HACCP
certified.
What is HACCP?
Hazard
Analysis
and Critical
Control Point
involves seven principles:
- Analyze hazards. Potential hazards
associated with a food and measures to control those
hazards are identified. The hazard could be biological,
such as a microbe; chemical, such as a toxin; or physical,
such as ground glass or metal fragments.
- Identify critical control points.
These are points in a food's production--from its raw
state through processing and shipping to consumption by
the consumer--at which the potential hazard can be
controlled or eliminated. Examples are cooking, cooling,
packaging, and metal detection.
- Establish preventive measures with
critical limits for each control point. For a cooked
food, for example, this might include setting the minimum
cooking temperature and time required to ensure the
elimination of any harmful microbes.
- Establish procedures to monitor the
critical control points. Such procedures might include
determining how and by whom cooking time and temperature
should be monitored.
- Establish corrective actions to be
taken when monitoring shows that a critical limit has not
been met--for example, reprocessing or disposing of
food if the minimum cooking temperature is not met.
- Establish procedures to verify that
the system is working properly--for example, testing
time-and-temperature recording devices to verify that a
cooking unit is working properly.
- Establish effective record keeping to
document the HACCP system. This would include records
of hazards and their control methods, the monitoring of
safety requirements and action taken to correct potential
problems. Each of these principles must be backed by sound
scientific knowledge: for example, published
microbiological studies on time and temperature factors
for controlling food-borne pathogens.
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