Cooking and Smoking Different Meats and Ingredients at the Same Time
Good Morning, my smokehouse (mechanical cooking, with real smoke) holds up to 6 trucks/carts and since business is picking up the question of cooking different items has come up. In the past, this company use to cook different items when they were just starting so there was a practice in which with a cart separation one cart can hold beef sausage (no allergens), spaced, than another with Brisket (no allergens), spaced and than chicken/beef sausage (no allergen, but with jalapenos). What are your thoughts? I am personally leaning towards not allowing this. A risk assessment is scheduled with the team in a week and would like any thoughts about this so I can point them in the right direction. Background: I was recently hired to replace the old QA Manager that lets say was moved on because they could not keep up with maintaining a Food Safety culture. This company has only been SQF certified for a year and practices were starting to move the wrong direction.
Wouldn't it be more quality issue? I mean, potential risk of cross-contamination? Though, I cannot imagine how it could happen as long as the products are already in casings... Used to work for sausage manufacturing, back in USSR:)
I actually see zero issue with this practice. even if there was an allergen---how would cross contamination occur?
The more important question in this process is (assuming you're smoking from raw) how do you monitor temperatures and then record it to make sure all of the products are checked properly
Running a real smoker is not cheap, so it's understandable that they are going to want it full when its operating
Once the company is even bigger, you could switch to a beef/pork/chicken etc. day where only 1 protein or allergen is in the smoker at a time
What are you concerned is going to happen????
Hey, DAV08, you've just re-posted my post:)
Apologies, not sure what happened there. Quality issues and cross contamination are the concerns and both QA and R&D are going to work together to look into this. My concern is more of just the thought of cooking different items and the potential questions that may arise from USDA or SQF audits. So I just want to get a feel of if other establishments are practicing this or not to hopefully point the team in the right direction.
I actually see zero issue with this practice. even if there was an allergen---how would cross contamination occur?
The more important question in this process is (assuming you're smoking from raw) how do you monitor temperatures and then record it to make sure all of the products are checked properly
Running a real smoker is not cheap, so it's understandable that they are going to want it full when its operating
Once the company is even bigger, you could switch to a beef/pork/chicken etc. day where only 1 protein or allergen is in the smoker at a time
What are you concerned is going to happen????
You are correct, we are smoking from raw and our smoker is industrial. The smokehouse has a probe to monitor internal temperatures, as well as an ambient thermometer. A terminal will give us all the data (ambient temps, internal product temp, humidity) that is needed. We also use Probe Thermometer loggers, as well as good old handheld thermometers to check and log temperatures. My concern is this is not a common practice. I should have phrased the question differently, more along the lines of "Is smoking this way common practice?" "What concerns/issues have others ran into when cooking/smoking other items (even with allergens)? And the plan in the long run is to have dedicated days to cook/smoke certain items (briskets/chicken/pork). Thank you for your time.
I spent some time in a large conventional smokehouse facility (lunch meat/pepperettes/salami etc.) they put like with like by STYLE
so salami in one smoke room
bologna in another
ham in another
But that was only due to time/temp salami all were of different blends (some with allergens, some without)