Safety & Quality
Food Safety is the number one priority at Swanson Meats. We take great pride in producing the safest, highest-quality product that we feed to our families and you can feed to yours. Below are some (but certainly not all) of the highlights from the systems we use to ensure the safety of our product.
All products produced by Swanson Meats, Inc. are produced under the oversight of the USDA, following its policies and guidance. We have a USDA inspector onsite daily who ensures compliance with federal food safety regulations.
Above and beyond the requirements of the USDA, Swanson Meats chose to participate in the GFSI recognized, internationally known Safe Quality Foods Program (SQF for short). This program provides a set of more stringent food safety standards that we choose to hold ourselves to, all in an effort to ensure food safety. An independent auditor comes annually to audit our food safety programs and practices, providing an unbiased analysis of our food safety system.
All of Swanson Meat’s suppliers must go through an approval process. This includes reviewing their food safety systems and associated documents to ensure they are ensuring the safety of the ingredients we are purchasing.
We operate under Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs), which are industry methods of operating that help mitigate risk of product contamination. Some of the GMPs are ensuring consistent washing of hands, requiring employees to wear PPE, and not allowing food or beverages in our production areas.
From the moment a truck is unloaded, through the manufacturing process, and while in storage; our products are constantly being monitored by temperature monitoring devices. This ensures the products stay cold, the shelf life is maximized, and growth prevention of spoilage microorganisms is mitigated.
All sanitation is handled exclusively by Swanson Meat’s employees, no contractors allowed. This means that when we fully disassemble our equipment and fully clean/ sanitize it, we know that everything is getting cleaned exactly as is intended. All equipment is then inspected twice before being used. We also use microbiological testing to verify that it's not just visually clean, it's clean at the microscopic level.
Swanson Meats' commitment assures our customers that the most stringent of halal standards are met when producing. We take this very seriously by implementing rigorous yearly training. In the production, all ingredients are pre-approved by Halal Transactions of Omaha. All aspects of our production is fully supervised. Only then is a halal certificate issued by our independent halal certifying agency.