Agri Beef gets verified under dual ISO/HACCP certification

Washington, D.C.

By SALLY SCHUFF
Feedstuffs Washington Editor

Agri Beef Co., an integrated ranching, cattle feeding and beef processing and meat company, is the world's first to have its beef production system verified under two internationally recognized certification systems for quality assurance and food safety.
The company's new system adds the entire chain of beef production to a formally registered system of management for food safety.
Agri Beef's new "Beef Supply Management System" complies with the dual requirements not only of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) system of standardized best management practices, but also with a hazard analysis and critical control points (HACCP) food safety regime. This is the first time to two have been combined.
Currently, three specific Codex Alimentarius international food safety standards are the basis for Agri Beef's feedlot ISO/HACCP plan. The formal certification builds on procedures that were already in place in the feedlot to address compliance with the 1997 U.S. feed rule, regulations of drug withdrawal times and proper use of pharmaceutical products in the company's feedlots.

Additional HACCP goals can be added in the future to the new certification framework, said Agri Beef president Robert Rebholtz Jr. "The neat thing with the ISO/HACCP foundation is that it sets the framework. ... When more technology is out there to identify risks, we'll be able to fold it right into our program," Rebholtz said. "We now have the systems in place to monitor what we're doing, and we can expand to cover new risks." While the U.S. Department of Agriculture mandates HACCP for U.S. meatpacking plants and the company's Western Beef plant complies, there is no such regulatory requirement for feedlots. Rebholtz said the extension of the HACCP food safety system to the company's feedlots is a part of the company's commitment to its beef customers. "They want to know someone is looking out for them," he told Feedstuffs. Developing the system for the massive operation, which includes six feedlots in three states, feeding 400,000 head per year, was a major undertaking. Agri Beef called on its staff and formed a HACCP team to help design the program and make sure that each step of the complex of a business was brought into the overall program.

While ISO and HACCP certifications are being implemented in many progressive feed mills, no cattle company has attempted such stringent measures for an integrated beef operation. Agri Beef's combination of dual ISO/HACCP certification is particularly innovative because it links both quality assurance and food safety, said Fred B. Andersen, the certified management consultant of F.B. Andersen & Associates Inc. who helped design the company's plan. (Andersen, of Red Deer, Alb., has worked with more than 100 North American companies that have gained ISO 9000 registration. His consulting business includes his wife, Teresa, (formerly a quality manager for Ridley Inc.). Implementing ISO/HACCP in the feedlots came after Agri Beef pioneered ISO compliance at its liquid protein plant in Kansas some years ago. Rebholtz said the idea "was spawned four or five years ago. We decided maybe there was a different way to look at our business." "Feedlot managers historically do their best day-in and day-out," he said. However, "one benefit of the ISO/HACCP system was that we started looking at things from a bigger picture -- when we hadn't had time before." As a result, the company has formally "defined quality and defined the targets we're going to go after," he said. Input into the program has expanded opportunities for employees at all levels to be involved in quality assurance. "The new system pulls in a lot more people, and it gets a lot more people involved from the bottom up," Rebholtz said. Agri Beef now has "the combination of employees driving the process in the feedlot and management guiding us in laying out the objectives." Designing the system, which must meet specific international standards, focuses attention -- and challenges -- on each step in the complex operation. Designing ways to meet specific goals is something "you can engage; it's fun," said Rebholtz. "When our certification came through, we went to thank our employees," he said, "and we saw a lot of excitement. The feedlot managers believe it will help them do their job better and help their employees."

Inspiration for moving to ISO/HACCP in the company's feedlots came from Rebholtz's study of food safety trends in Europe. "We saw a lot of European demand with respect for ISO food safety requirements for beef. We thought we ought to look at this." (ISO is a network of the national standards institutes of 148 countries, which has a central secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland, that coordinates the system.) Products of all kinds -- film, software, foods -- that carry the ISO certification assures that standard production practices have been met.

While Agri Beef now produces its own brand name beef products at its Washington Beef packing plant, part of the original decision to implement ISO/HACCP beef production system also was driven by affidavits packers began demanding four to five years ago that cattle had been fed in compliance with the 1997 feed rule, Reholtz said. The ISO/HACCP program formalizes practices Agri Beef already had in place to assure that its cattle supplies had been fed in compliance. Additionally, the company has had a policy requiring dedicated transportation of feed to assure that there is no cross-contamination from mammalian protein. Agri Beef vice president of feedyard operations Jeff Johnson said the new system has streamlined issues for corporate and feedyard managers. Before embarking on the new system, "we were trying to look at ways to make day-to-day improvements in operations," Johnson said. "We felt like a lot of times we were hitting our heads against the wall, but the ISO process allowed us to step back and look at the whole feedlot operation in terms of process and systems approach," Johnson reported. "We start out with trying to define what our customer wants. We're custom feeders and have a lot of ranchers that feed cattle with us," Johnson said.

The company's ISO/HACCP-certified Beef Supply Management System was developed by a HACCP team of Agri Beef staff and help of Andersen and his wife, Teresa. Andersen is a registered ISO specialist who has taken more than 100 companies in North America to ISO 9000 registration. The independent audit to verify that Agri Beef's ISO and HACCP systems met international standards was conducted by Deloitte Touche. In March, an independent audit by Deloitte Touche certified Agri Beef's beef operation to the ISO 9001:2000 standard. Agri Beef executives met with USDA undersecretary for food safety Dr. Elsa Murano recently in Washington to review the new ISO/HACCP program at their feedlots. Steven Cohen, a spokesperson for Murano, noted that USDA's Food Safety & Inspection Service, which conducts federal inspection of meat, poultry and eggs, has no authority to regulate food safety on farms. However, he said, "Murano has advocated for looking at the farms and feedlots as a place to improve food safety and to reduce pathogen loads before animals enter the processing plant. She's very excited about the level of acceptance that the industry has shown on the impacts it can have on food safety." While not commenting directly on the system developed at Agri Beef, Cohen reported that programs that move food safety into the production system are of great value. "Murano feels this is really an exciting frontier, and it holds great promise for reducing pathogens and improving food safety."

Additional information is at www.agribeef.com and www.iso.org.