Gathering and verifying production dates from suppliers

Hi,

I am taking care of the food safety for a spice re-packer in the US. Which means that we mix and pack spices to sell to retailers.

Since there is no "used by" date for bulk spices coming in (except when they forget to take them off...), can I request the suppliers for their production dates, and if they are wholesalers, the production date of their supplier. I want to be able to use the age of the spice as specification for the mixes, to have measurable quality.

Second and consequential question, how do I make sure that they are providing the right production date to us?

Thanks for any help.

You should definitely ask them and they should definitely give it to you.  As regards trust then you need to qualify them as a supplier to give yourself assurance.  This can be done through questionnaires, gathering specifications and certification information and ideally a visit/audit so that you understand how their systems work and to see that they have all that is expected of a professional supplier.

Regards,

Simon

Hi jems,

I'm not in USA but this kind of query can sometimes ultimately be a regulatory issue.

It may depend on what you mean by "Food safety" in respect to yr specific products / specifications / customers. IMEX most safety-related specifications tend to be "generic" rather than age-based.

Previous post is an appropriate comment from a RA POV.

Or did you mean date-labelling of yr mixes ?

IMEX (not spices)  the sourcing of actual production dates of components of mixes can be a highly vexed activity.