During a recent Ask the Petfood Pro, Will Henry of Turkey Creek Holdings shared plant-floor insights on where food safety programs succeed — and where they fail.
During a recent Ask the Petfood Pro chat, Will Henry, owner of Turkey Creek Holdings and a 30-year veteran of pet food manufacturing, outlined the core components of an effective food safety system, and where even well-documented programs tend to break down on the plant floor.
During the session, "Ramparts of a Strong Food Safety System," Henry drew on decades of hands-on experience to offer practical guidance for pet food manufacturers and processors. His recurring themes: the importance of people, the necessity of science-based procedures, and the dangers of complacency when processes or ingredients change.
1. Your people are the foundation of any food safety system. No program, however well-designed, will perform without the right team behind it.
"If you've got a group that care about what they do, they care about the quality of the work they provide — that's going to make or break any kind of good program you could have," Henry said. "The best SOPs, the right research involved — but if you don't have the right technicians and team on staff to execute for you, it's not going to perform at the level that it should."