Good manners & right conductin food manufacturing

In primary and secondary schools, we had a portion of our report card that relates to Good Manners and Right Conduct (GMRC) and almost always I would get a grade of either a “B minus or a “C”. I never had an “A” and perhaps that grade was reserved for the boys who go to heaven.

A Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) is a system of producing and testing to ensure that a quality product is made. It does not instruct on how to produce the product but there are several general principles that must be followed in the production process. There are other good practice systems like Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) for laboratories in the drug industry and Good Transportation Practice (GTP) for the guidelines for the proper transport of medicines. And what happen to the bad boys...well they go to Amsterdam!

On the other hand, Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) is “a systematic preventive approach to food safety”. It aims to identify those hazards like physical, allergenic, chemical and biological that makes the manufactured product unsafe for human consumption.

You do not want fish hooks on the fillets of smoke salmon (physical hazard) you are eating and if you have an allergy to peanuts, make sure that those fried chicken bits are not cooked in peanut oil. Chemical hazards remind us of the adulteration of infant milk formula using melamine (used in laminate flooring) causing widespread kidney failure among Chinese children; neither do not want fly maggots on your cheese unless you are an Italian from Sardinia and you deliberately introduce the larvae of cheese fly (Piophila casei) to produce a local delicacy known as casu marzu.

When a company like the M. Lhuillier Products Inc., headed by my friend Perry Ong gets both certificates of these globally-accepted standards, it is time to celebrate! This company was established in 1989 because of the deluge of mangoes harvested from hundreds of mango trees in the properties of businessman Michel Lhuillier and the local market could not absorb the influx of ripe mangoes. The mix of dried fruit products has expanded through the years but the best sellers are still dried mangoes.

The major concern of an importer of a food product is the health of its customers and the award of these two certificates of compliance gives that importer the sense of security in distributing these products.

Select members of media were invited to PINO Filipino Restaurant (Wilson St. Lahug, Phone # 2320939) for dinner and your favorite food columnist joined the celebration and feasted on Filipino specialities like Mixed Veggies with Oyster Sauce, Grilled Pork Chop with Native Sauce, Chicken Mango Roll, Bam-I and favourite that night, the Beef Calderita.  Dessert was the leche flan but I did miss Pino’s signature sweets, the Fiesta sa Barrio (Leche Flan, Ube Halaya, and Macapuno Balls).

Next on target is ISO 22000, a food safety standard from the International Organization for Standardization and hopefully this 2013, that this pièce de résistance is finally bagged. [email protected]