First in Health
Safe Quality Food
Nothing demonstrates our concern for quality in the orchard and packing plant more than our certification of Food Safety assurance in both the warehousing and growing under the SQF program. We are the first grower in the nation to receive the certification, which involved an independent audit of all farm, warehousing, and packaging operations by Safe Quality Food (SQF), an Australian agency.
SQF currently certifies 3,300 businesses in 16 countries. SQF was developed by the Australian produce industry and is based in Switzerland.
SQF was created in 1995 and works with the food industry world wide to monitor produce contamination. The organization focuses on clean hands, eliminating exposure to foreign objects in the packaging and processing, and monitoring sources for contamination similar to a HACCP (Hazard Analysis of Critical Control Points) process in other food manufacturing settings.
Broetje Orchards earned Third Party SQF 2000 certification for warehousing and packaging process in August 2001 and followed with SQF 1000 certification of the orchard farming operation in spring 2003.
“We chose the SQF program because it helps us monitor the safety and quality of our fruit from seed to the consumer’s table,” Ron Appleby says. “We were doing many of the right things already, but now we have it on record, and being involved in a formal program like SQF increases the awareness of our people. It’s been a great program for us and we don’t think anyone in our industry can touch our accomplishment; yet—mainly because other packers purchase their fruit from hundreds of growers. We are the source of the fruit we pack; we have established critical control points from the minute the orchard fruit comes onto our property until it leaves on a truck.”
We understand that consumers are very concerned about where their products are coming, so we chose SQF because it is the strictest, most stringent program of its kind in the world. It is the highest certification we can get. Our customers can feel comfortable and confident that our fruit is safe. We think that’s a big advantage.”
