General Policies
Qualify Food Safety Manual (QFSM)
Boysenberries New Zealand’s QFSM has been developed to help our growers, packers and coolstore operators deliver best practice, and ensure the supply of high quality boysenberries to our customers. The manual covers every aspect of boysenberry supply, from growing through harvesting and packing to transport and frozen storage. We take the issue of food safety very seriously and will continually update our manual to ensure our boysenberries are consistently of a high quality, are safe and healthy and delivered on time.
Food Safety Programme
Based on a preventative rather than reactive approach, this programme has been developed to identify and control food safety risk factors in order to establish and maintain food safety. Its benefits include:
- Ability to manage food safety/reduce risk to customers
- Reduce waste or rework
- Reduce customer complaints, and
- Retain existing and attract new customers.
The programme ensures that everyone involved in the process of growing and exporting our fruit has a procedure for identifying and analysing food safety hazards whether they are biological, chemical or physical. All growers operate to an annually audited HACCP plan. This in turn minimises the impact on the safety and quality of boysenberries.
An external 3rd party quality systems audit of each approved Pack house is carried out on an annual basis.
Management
We are committed to ensuring our quality policies and procedures continue to meet industry requirements. To do so we invest in our people by developing and training them in food safety and quality principles, as well as ensuring all manuals are up-to-date with industry initiatives.
Traceability
Primary products are labelled live at the time of packing with Grower#; Linecode and Sequential Unit #. This information is also imbedded in the label barcode. Processed products are labelled live at the time of packing with Batch Code and Sequential Unit #
This information provides traceability back to the Berry Garden giving our customers confidence in our ability to locate and isolate any issue that may arise.
Environmental
Boysenberries New Zealand growers as custodians of the land, don’t take the unspoilt environment for granted and have incorporated rigorous environment standards into their daily practices.
Non GMO – The boysenberries produced in New Zealand are from conventionally bred varieties that have been carefully selected using traditional breeding techniques. Boysenberries New Zealand can confidently assert that its boysenberries do not come from any varieties that have been genetically modified.