Is your supplier ISO or HACCP compliant? Have you seen the document? But more importantly have you seen the facility? As the above post as seen in a Tom Peters slide show illustrates, almost anyone can be certified but is this what is needed?
Certification is only that, certification. Getting a quality product is entirely different.Â
The same holds true for 3rd party audits of frozen factories. Yes they show that certain written criteria have been met but it doesn’t translate into getting an “A” grade product.  Not at all. I can follow all the procedures correctly but if I start with poor raw material all the procedures are not going to give me grade “A” material.Â
In our many travels to China we have seen many a frozen vegetable factory that has an ISO or HACCP certificate that we would not consider importing from. Yet today there are many of our customers that will buy from China without ever seeing the facility, and only trusting some certification. This buying (cheap) mentality can only lead to problems down the road. It is unfortunate because their lack of due diligence will end up giving the industry or country a bad name when the problem does surface.Â
 Our best policy is to know our suppliers first hand, don’t be fooled by the certificate.
Technorati Tags: Noon International, ISO, HACCP, vegetable, certificate
Entries (RSS)