Food Factories

Consultancy Services

According to the Health Protection Agency, the total number of food poisoning notifications for England and Wales in 2008 was ca. 69,000. Most people believe that this is a substantial underestimate of the problem, as not all cases of food poisoning are reported by those affected.

Moonlight Environmental Ltd provides bespoke food safety and food hygiene consultancy in food factories.  This involves visiting you at the factory, assessing existing systems and matching these to where you want to be.  It may be in response to requirements made by enforcers, purchasers of your product, or from your own in house decision to make improvements.  If you want to acheive BRC or SALSA accreditation we can help. 

We advise meat, fish and dairy product manufacturers who are required to have premises approval.  We have helped factory businesses go from strength to strength by developing:

  • HACCPs ('hazard analysis critical control point' systems)
  • policies (e.g. food safety, staff and visitor health surveillance, staff training, complaints and product recall and supplier auditing) 
  • factory and production checks e.g. microbiological and chemical sampling schedule, weekly audit, breakables register, goods in checks, food processing records, cleaning schedules
  • product specifications
  • traceability sytstems

We use a UKAS accredited laboratory.  This enables clients with food factories that do not have their own in house laboratory to be serviced in one step.  With our laboratory partners, we provide advise on labelling, product testing, (routine and shelf life microbiology) as well as chemical and nutritional analysis.  We also carry out air and swab tests for environmental monitoring.

Auditing

We recommend regular audits; these help you to:

  • know what is around the corner in the next local authority inspection report
  • lower insurance premiums for taking a proactive approach to food safety
  • demonstrate accredited third party auditing which shows potential customers and enforcers your commitment to food safety
  • demonstrate a defence of due diligence should legal action be threatened

When food safety and hygiene systems are in place, audits assess how effectively they are working.  We will audit to your specification, be it legal compliance or a particular chosen quality standard, such as that of the British Retail Consortium or British Sandwich Association.  In addition, we will audit suppliers and undertake third party factory audits.