We get peanuts in lined cardboard boxes and /or bags that are like the bags for chips (maybe a packaging supplier on here knows the name - shiny silver on the inside, plasticy plain white on the outside). But we do not roast our own, all of the peanuts we get are already processed. As for suppliers...we use a large number of nut vendors (again for roasted), Georgia Nut Co is the best with documentation, COAs, etc, but I think they're only processed (?) and I've no idea what they're like for purchasing (agh, more gaps in my supplier approval program, no vendor score card data yet) . We've also used/gotten various levels of documentation & customer service from ... American Almond (Here's what purchasing had to say when I asked for the docs:"Oh, I don't talk to anyone there, I just ordered it on the internet because R&D told me to.", they decided filling out the contact us form was too much trouble and got a different vendor) , Jimbo's Jumbos (had some docs and a really well designed, minimalist spec sheet I wanna mind thieve) , Setton International Farms (very good customer service, not too sure about their QA, they had a recall half a decade ago but I've never had any out of spec product from them, micro included) and Nuts.com (a real company name that looks hilariously fake on a kosher cert, and were able to get us documentation), and those are just off the top of my head. It's a fight to get purchasing to buy from one nut guy, and I have no idea why. They all sell nuts, purchasing. Can you tell I've been thinking about this a lot? I'm willing to make a special almond exception for Blue Diamond (they R awesome), and I think we need "back up" vendors for all of our raw materials, but it's too much.
We were getting macadamia nuts delivered to us in plastic trash bags designed as kitchen liners... We emailed the supplier to let them know that make shift packaging off the shelves of Wal Mart meant to hold trash was not acceptable for a food product. Then the emails never actually sent because our outgoing filter blocks the words "white trash" . So we called them , and had very little fight about switching to cardboard with liners. I referenced some code about raw material packaging not posing a contamination risk (it's either SQF AIB or FSSC but I can't remember which)
I would lodge a complaint with the supplier (with pictures) and not receive (reject the shipment) if it is moldy or if the packaging is damaged. You can't use it, so don't pay for it. Senior management will agree. And document the crap out of it, so that when the auditor asks you if you reject stuff, you can be like "yep, look at all the stuff purchasing is peed at me for rejecting. They told the company president I was going to 'bring the company down' if we only used approved vendors . That's why they gave us luke warm coffee. Apparently, and this was not covered in my HACCP training, we don't need robust PRP programs if they worked at or heard of another that site passed an audit by some combination of egregious auditor incompetence and blindfolding. Don't you understand that if they can get away with it we can?!" (Ed note: While I often day dream about saying things like this to an auditor, I never do. I probably will when I'm about to get fired {every job I have will end until the one that doesn't}, because I can't stop myself from living out saying stuff day dreams.)
Unless mold is acceptable because roasting is your kill step? Still, dude, alfatoxins. Mold no es bueno. You can test the moisture content during receiving and reject if it's out of specification.
Edited by magenta_majors, Yesterday, 09:29 PM.