Hello all,
My name is Jason Dudka; I am the HACCP Coordinator at a dry spice blending facility in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I stumbled across this site a few months ago and have been poring over the forums for a while, reading up on problems and solutions that relate to my area of business. I just saw this introduction topic now and thought I would say hello to be better able to connect with people in the spice world around the globe. I also know that my predecessor uses this site so hi Daryl if you see this!
We are certified to FSSC 22000 here and have completed one surveillance audit so far. Currently, I am focusing on improving our internal audits and our packaging traceability system. Another topic I am looking into, which I have seen several discussions on in the forums, is about dry spice shelf life issues. I am working on how to deal with product near or past its shelf life in terms of what to do to essentially re-certify the product internally to justify extending its use past the suggested shelf life. The difficulty I am faced with is that we are a small business so sending out sample after sample to an external, certified lab for micro results is basically cost-prohibitive. So if anyone wants to discuss any of these topics or anything else related to spice (or just food safety in general!) feel free to say hello and we can connect. I don't know if it is a faux pas to put up my email here so for now, I will not.
Cheers,
Jason