At Fonterra, food safety and quality is everyone’s responsibility. Why? Because we make food that families, whānau and friends eat every day. And we make a promise to everyone of them that they can trust the food we make.
At the heart of that promise is our global Food Safety and Quality system. It ensures that wherever we are located in the world, we have a consistent risk-based framework that sets out clear expectations for our people to follow.
And we communicate these expectations to our third party suppliers, who partner with us to make safe, high quality food.
Our promise starts on farm
Our New Zealand farming families are committed to the highest standards of quality control through individual food safety and quality plans, regular on-farm testing, and independent farm and environmental assessments.
At every farm pickup milk samples are taken and our tankers use cutting-edge testing technology to ensure only the highest standard of milk is processed.
Every milk collection is tested by an independent provider, and both raw milk and final product are tested under a national programme to ensure there are no chemical contaminates.
We support our managed milk pools outside of New Zealand to achieve the same high standards for the safety and quality of their milk.
We uphold uncompromising food safety and quality standards
Quality and safety are built into our process and our people from the beginning of our value chain until product reaches our consumers.
We have triggers throughout the process that identify and control quality and provide our operators with information which they can act on to ensure quality parameters are achieved.
Testing and constant surveillance monitoring of processes and premises gives us the assurance that our processes and controls are effective.
Our shipping containers are cleaned, inspected and tested before being packed and security sealed to ensure our products remain safe on their journey.
Food safety and quality as part of our identity
We know each one of us needs to show up every single day and do the right thing for food safety.
To support this we focus on strengthening our food safety and quality behaviours and decisions – both in our operational sites and in our support offices.
We follow a structured approach to building culture and measure our progress regularly. New and innovative thinking about adult learning and behavioural science research has allowed us to engage our people and begin the journey from compliance to a safety culture.
We trace our products globally
Fonterra understands how important it is to our customers, consumers and regulators that we can trace product quickly and accurately if needed.
We continue to invest in purpose-built technology that allows us to electronically trace our product – out to the customer, and back through our supply chain to the ingredients and to the farm gate.
This allows us to pinpoint where our product is at any time and make informed decisions to keep our customers and consumers safe.
Achieving benchmark standards
Our Food Safety and Quality System is subject to regular scrutiny through third-party audits by regulators, key account customers, and certification bodies, as well as our own internal audit programme.
Our global manufacturing facilities are independently certified to global recognised food safety and quality management systems (e.g. FSSC 22000, BRC). Our global vendor management program is underpinned and aligned to FSSC / GFSI standard and framework. This approach allows Fonterra to provide our network of suppliers and vendors with a reference booklet that communicates expectations with regards to compliance to FSSC / GFSI systems. Fonterra’s ingredients that have a direct impact on the safety of our food, are sourced from suppliers that are GFSI, BRC certified (or an alternative globally recognised certification body).