 Thank you very much. First of all thank you for coming this morning and I just want to talk briefly about who we are and why we did what we did and then Linda will go into the food safety aspect of what we try to do at our cremary. We are a seven generation family of dairy farmers. We've always had Jersey cows in our family. Our family immigrated from Switzerland in the mid-1800s and we've always been in southern Illinois dairy farming Jersey cows. We are located at Greenville Illinois which is about 45 minutes east of St. Louis, Missouri and we are our farmers right off of Interstate 70 about four miles which is very advantageous to us because part of our goal when developing the cremary was also tourism. So like I said myself along with two of our daughters own and operate the the cremary. Amy and Beth they are actually the principal owners in the cremary. We felt the next generation if they were going to devote their lives to this that they need to have responsibility for. Both of our daughters we have four daughters but the two that came back to the farm have master's degrees from college but they wanted to come back so we felt at that time we needed to do something more. Our options were to milk a lot more cows or do something value-added. The value-added part was what we really wanted to concentrate on. So as we as we got into this we first had to develop a marketing strategy and part of what we want to do is we wanted to concentrate on our heritage and our tradition but we are also a grass-based dairy which is a little bit uncommon as what you see today and so that was really part of our what we wanted to do. We also had the Jersey cow which is a little unique so that was part of our marketing strategy. By doing tourism one of the things we felt was really critical was you had to have quality animal care because people are on your farm. They want you to take care of your cattle properly. As you can see it all begins with animal care. We are grass-based. We do everything all natural. We are not organic but we are all natural and by doing that we feel we end up with great cheeses and as it turned out a lot of our customers think so too. As our markets developed and we got into this we found that our best markets were restaurants and chefs. Very very loyal to your product as opposed to maybe grocery stores try to pinch a penny here or there from you will dump you if they could find a better product or another product that moves as opposed to chefs. They're very loyal and very open to what you're trying to do and very supportive. There's a good movement in the country today local foods and they are very very supportive of what we are trying to do. As I see here we have a sign of Market Jersey Farm you can see our cows cross the road basically four times a day. They go across the road to eat to our pastures to our paddocks. They go back and forth and to me it's a common occurrence but when we do tours and stuff you will see people stop what they're doing and run out to the road to watch the cows cross the road. So you never know what really people want to see as you go forward. When you do something like this you have to find your niche you have to know your market you have to find your niche. When we built the creamery we built it with viewing windows for tourism. We also built an underground cave and it is modeled after some of the Swiss caves in Switzerland at eight foot underground. It is basically an underground basement with a lid on it. We keep the temperature in there to age our cheeses at 58 degrees year around with about 90 percent humidity. So it's a little bit different. It's a little unique and it makes great cheeses very expensive when we first started putting in but our costs through the years are very very low to keep this up keep this going. As I said earlier tourism is a big part of our business. We felt in our family history that we have always been very much about educating the communities and educating people and what we're trying to do. So tourism was very important. It's also another source of income as you get into this. This past year we had approximately thirty five thousand people visit the farm. A little bit about a year and a half ago the Girl Scouts of Western Missouri approached our daughters about doing some special tours if the Girl Scouts met the cookie sales quota and we said sure why not. Figured to have a couple hundred girls come out. We had over six thousand girls. So from the first of May to the first October we had a lot of young girls running around in green shirts out there and it was a blast. So very educational very informative and we were more than more than proud to do this. So that's that's a little bit about us why we did what we did and as you get into this the first thing you realize is food safety. You got to have quality food safety and one of the things we had by doing this we had some building advantages when we built the facility. Linda's brother had just retired from Prairie Farms Co-op as an executive. So we had an inside track there with consultations on helping get our facility started. We also had my wife Linda who is a regular dietitian and had spent her whole life in food service safety and food management. So with that I'm going to turn it over to her and she's going to talk about what we did to improve our food safety as we developed our business. Now what I intend to do is we're going to go through and I'm going to be telling you some things about the food safety program and how we set it up and our creamery but I want you to know that the basics of what we're going to be talking about will apply to anything any food product. So I'm going to be talking a little bit about FISMA the new food safety modernization act that is being implemented at this time and I hope that my goal is that I can make it so that it applies to whatever product you're producing. We know that when we're starting any kind of production that we have a lot of things that we have to get sorted out. Our financing is very important. What we're going to produce, how we're going to produce that. Our staffing, do we have money to hire help? Are we going to, is the whole family going to pitch in and get minimum to no pay for the first time as we're being established? What's our market? It's not going to work well if we produce something we have no market for. So all these things are very burdensome and can be very overcoming. We have a business plan that sort of puts all these things together and now with FISMA and when I say FISMA I'm referring to the Food Safety Modernization Act. The acronym is FSMA and what we call it is FISMA to make it short. That has now with that new act food safety is as absolutely as important as any of the other things as we start a business. So food safety and food defense become very important to what we're doing. Now to begin with I want to clarify what we're talking about. Food safety means the accidental contamination of food. That means somebody came in today and they handled a product they didn't wash their hands well. That means that somebody didn't change their shoes and as they were coming in they walked through some bird droppings and carried Lord knows what in. Those things are accidental. But now we also realize that we have to be equally concerned with food defense and that's the intentional adulteration of food. Something has been done to your food that was intentional. So no we're not just looking at what might happened. You know we have to make sure that the sanitizers are working and that the personal hygiene is working. Now we have to be a concern with equally as important as what might intentionally happen to your food as it's being processed or taken to the market. So just to clarify on FSMA as I said that is the FDA Food Safety Monetization Act and that what the aim of that whole act is that to ensure that the US food supply is safe by shifting our focus from responding to a foodborne outbreak and contamination to preventing it. So what we used to do is there would be an outbreak and we say oh my goodness let's go find out what it is. Now what we are doing as producers of whatever type of food it is we have to assure that we prevent it before it happens. So that's where we're going to get in a little bit further in the talk. We're going to talk about what preventive programs we set up and how we do that because now we have to verify that what we're doing works. We have to validate what we're doing works. So we'll get to that. Now the implementation of FSMA is it started in January 2016 was the first implementation. However if you're a very small business averaging less this is according to the FDA website a very small business averaging less than a million dollars per year in both annual sales of human food and the market value of the human food that you're holding you have three years to comply except that starting January 2016 you have to have records on file to show to prove that you're actually in this status that you're actually a million dollars or less. So that's the part you have to comply with right now. We have a little time here to get all these things but we've got a lot of work to do so it's going to take its time. If your business is subject to the pasteurized milk ordinance you have three years because they're going to be making changes to the pasteurized milk ordinance to concur with FSMA and so that hasn't all been finalized yet so we have three years if if you are in that category. If you're a very small business with fewer than 500 full-time equivalent employees you have two years so January 2018 and all other businesses have one year. So in other words what I'm saying is if you're if you go in the other business category they started monitoring FSMA but you have a year to actually get everything worked out. If you have a visit they'll come and see what you're doing progressing towards it but it will be more like a learning curve and so that's what what these time periods are. Okay so what's that mean to us? It means that as producers of food for human consumption we're responsible to develop specific and effective methods to keep foodborne illness from happening. Now realize one of the big changes with FSMA is that this now moves into a criminal it can be negligence on producing this I have no idea what I'm doing I thought it was a really good idea I didn't try to learn anything because I'm just gonna plead ignorance and it's not gonna work and so and if you review cases that's been in the news with the cantaloupe and different ones people are serving prison time because they didn't find out they didn't or they purposely to cut costs missed a step or there was a piece of equipment that they knew didn't work they didn't didn't get it fixed those are things that are very very important now I'm not trying to discourage everybody don't quit producing your things but I'm just trying to tell you that this is very important this is worth taking time to learn about okay so what are we gonna do well when I've figured out what I'm producing and some of those very first logistic things I'm going to delegate a food safety defense coordinator I need a point person to start learning what it is I need to do on on defense just the same as I need a point person to keep my money in order now we've got a small family operation like my husband told you and I'm gonna tell you we wear lots of hats so it doesn't mean that a different name goes with each one of those hats but you have to have a person that's dedicated that is you're all gonna be busy I realize that but this has to be taken seriously make sure that you familiarize yourself with the FDA inspection guidelines the FDA has a wonderful website with lots of information I'm going to tell you it takes a long time to get through the layers of what all is there and that's actually what we part of what we did with our grant is that if you go to our grant and on the front of your handout we put that number on the first slide and so that you could look it up and what I've done there is I've got just numerous numerous references that you can use with no charge that will help you get started on these things the second the next thing you have to do is register your facility with the FDA as a food facility and we'll talk about that a little bit more in a minute and now what I'm ready to do is start looking at exactly what we're going to do how we're going to do it and we're going to start with standard operating procedures that can also be referred to if you hear somebody say prerequisite programs that includes that those are interchangeable this also includes GMPs GAPs good manufacturing practices good agricultural practices so that all goes into the prerequisite or standard operating procedure part so we're going to take these things apart and talk about each point just a little bit and so we're going to delegate a food safety and defense coordinator and I'm probably going to be at the same time thinking about in my business who makes sense to be on this food safety team because in most anything there's a lot of things going on at the same time and different people are going to need to have their eyes open and at least make some contributions so seek information like I said that FDA website and our SARS our SARS grant has a ton of references to use educate yourself with good reliable information bad information well is bad information and it's be very detrimental you're spinning your wheels and you're probably going to be going backwards so with the extension with you know like I said the website there are consultants out there but beware that there's some consultants it's like everything else there's some good there's some bad so the bottom line is that you receive that education yourself if you need to get it through another party then that's perfectly fine these type of conferences the SARS website is phenomenal for information start getting yourself educated okay the next thing is know what regulation you have to you have to comply with in our business we have FSMA we have the pasteurized milk ordinance we have the 3a that is the equipment part so we have a lot of different things that we have to that we have to be aware of and we all they all luckily this is sort of a good thing that's happening with with the FSMA is that they're all echoing the same main line and so the same main goals are you know trickling from one to another with with some uniqueness of course study the regulation I know is going to put you to sleep and you're going to want to like want to smack somebody up against the head or something stay away from people while you're studying perhaps but study the regulation figure out what it means and put it into your business and you're going to be the best person to do that you and your staff because you and your staff know what's going on in your business more than any FDA compliance officer or anybody else determine how the business will comply with that regulation okay so the FDA food facilities registration if you do a Google search for FDA food facility registration it'll come up on the website now at it there unfortunately or maybe fortunately if you need to use it there is a company that'll come up first that will register your facility for a fee to register yourself with the FDA if you go to the FDA look at FDA.gov make sure that's in the website that you're clicking and they give you a line by line guidance on how to do that I'm not I'm not like disrespecting any any a company that wants to help you but the thing is that you still need to answer the questions and to pay extra money may not be in your best interest okay so we've registered for online and it will take first time through it'll take you maybe I think it probably took us maybe like by the time we actually found what we had to do and you know got settled that we were answering their questions correctly maybe an hour and a half but it's not not that daunting then you need to go in and re-register every October 1st through December 1st anywhere in that period on even number years so you re-register you will get make sure whenever you do the initial registration you print off and it will tell you it'll come up and it'll say print this and keep this information because you have created yourself a pen and so you can get back into that FDA food facility registration website and that's how you re-register you have a facility number now and so now it's registered with the FDA and they know what kind of what kind of manufacturing you do okay so there will be a change in a piece of equipment there will be a change in how you do some process and update your standard operating procedures or retreat weapons it's to blow with that and this this is like creating your own model for your for your facility that's what you're doing with this you're telling people how you're going to do it when you're going to do it maybe you're going to put a part in there why you're going to do it who's going to do it so that's what you're what the standard operating procedure and there's several things that I put on on the soldiers grant that gives you a template so it gives you an idea of where to stop and make sure that you realize that the basic things are really important like for instance you know this or said that washing make sure they had gloves as they were thinking your product they realized that's very important and so those don't just think that we're going to get the big fabulous really complicated things the very every step is very important that that's addressed so these procedures also include your GMT's and also basic environmental and operating conditions that support your safety plan in other words what we're doing here when we establish the standard operating procedures we're making a rope a roadmap that we believe we refer to our staffer refer to regulatory compliance individuals can refer to that's telling them how we're making how we do business here our standard operating procedures consider this this is the foundation of our whole safety if we build a good firm foundation or with our good all-encompassing standard operating procedures now the rest of our safety plan is going to be very successful so the contents of a food safety plan there's two columns here and we have a column which is to my right your left is the required so it has to have a hazard analysis it has to have preventive control we have to address any of these that apply to our product our process food allergens sanitation and then and there's you know it can go on and on depending on what your your facility is then we have to have some way that we set up that we're going to monitor we have to have a corrective action because we all know that in real life everything never blows away you know the way we say it we wish it did so we already decide that well in case this happens then we're going to do this and if this happens we're going to do that so we have some corrective action granted there might be another thing that comes up that we haven't decided but at least we've got a mindset so that in the moment that the catastrophe happens we start meeting ourselves in that mindset of things that we can do then we have verification okay so I'm an old my a lot of my career has been spent in managing dietary departments so for instance just to make a simple thing our thing that's very important is when we're manually washing dishes in our green pot sink is that our sanitizer is at the right well how am I going to know that's what we call verification how am I going to know my sanitizer in this three-pot sink is at the right I have a test strip so I stick the test strip in I wait the amount of time I compare it to the chart I have just made a verification so what I'm trying to tell you that verification can be as simple as a test strip and I check it and that's right now I know that if I use this amount of sanitizer and I use this amount of water it's going to be good because I verified it so it could be as simple as that the next thing is that we have a recall and traceability now a lot of people kind of get traceability and recall they sort of go from one to the other recall setting up a recall plan man that means that I already have written down on paper in the event that I get for instance a call from a customer a customer complaints and they say I don't know maybe you know you're a place that you're making hot home making this up obviously and they just got a piece of hard plastic in their hot home okay at that time my whole staff and I are just going to be like really maxed out stress to the max that I'm not thinking very well I already have to not have written down who's going to do what I have a person that's going to check the classifications of the recalls with the FDA website there's three different classifications or I mean four different classifications one that is very seriously somebody's really going to give her a feel someone that gets very high potential they're going to be injured but probably not third that's not a good thing I don't like looking at pieces of little plastic in my hot and you know so it's more like that and for it's just like you know I wish it didn't happen kind of a thing so they're different levels of classification I have somebody in my recall plan I already know and they already know what it is that they should be looking at okay traceability is that I have tracked every ingredient I put in that product and so I know when I take it I know where everything came from and when it leaves me I know exactly where it goes and so last traceability there's a few things here you can see that it's useful I want to caution you that if you put this in your good safety plan that it is you've now subject to regulatory do not embellish do not make things up that are not through for instance in your facility over make it very realistic okay then we go on and we have our risk-based preventive control so this is the new part of this line and this focus on what matters the most for food safety it's preventive it's not reactive so we're doing things that are we do things now I verify that that pot sink is at the right sanitizer but now I need to validate and sometimes these words that we use all the time but now they're in different context it's very frustrating but to validate I need to know that what I've done is absolutely going to verify so I'm good every time I'm going to test that test strip but I might have a statement from the company saying that this is true this test strip will tell you that so I validate it by for instance when we do our CIP in our free read with all the pipes that were around we have an acid wash and so we have to do an acid validation it's like environmental testing swapping that that's valid that's validating that what we're doing is right until we change the process somehow it's validating so that's sort of the difference we work in conjunction and we're supported by other programs like our good manufacturing process and we're designed to minimize the risk of being safe so that's what preventive controls are now I want to just tell you a little bit about how many are you familiar with castle how many have ever heard of us okay well has a stance where hazard analysis critical control point and just a very brief background is that that hat that started back in the 60s when NASA was getting ready to send men in a manned space ship and they didn't know for sure what was going to happen to the human body as it left the earth a gravitational force were in space with no rally what they knew for sure was the food they said could not make a sin and so they contracted with the Phil's fairy company to do whatever you have to do to assure that food does not make him sick so that's where has it was born they took every step that preparation and they made sure that there was no introduction of contamination and that he did whatever they could possible to eliminate any contamination within so in other words at that point in time when we did was in product testing we made it and then we test to see how it turned out now we're turning the tables and we're saying no we're going to be proactive we want to know what's going on as we do it so very briefly if you're interested I put we put our contact information on the back of your hand now but very briefly this is what has a bit we do our hazard analysis you look at your your what you're doing and write down possible now I was working with one company and they wrote down that will dust might fall from the ceiling well that's a good aspect it might fall from the ceiling but what we're going to do is we're going to approach that in standard operating procedures so I don't have to put it in my hazard analysis I'm aware of it and then we have critical control points what am I going to do to make sure it doesn't happen so if I'm cooking a hamburger I know that I'm going to cook it till it's done and my critical limit is I'm going to cook that beef to a hundred and fifty-five degrees I'm going to monitor it because I got a thermometer I'm going to stick in it and I'm going to know if it's not a hundred and fifty-five degrees I'm cooking a cook it longer so that's my corrective action the difference with preventive controls is that now we've added a step here that we say we may introduce that there may be allergen cross-contamination and those things so this is the difference in preventive controls and has it they work together you still need a has it but with preventive controls you have more of a global you don't necessarily stick the thermometer in it and cook it more to a hundred and fifty-five it might be something like I rewash something again so recall and trace ability and again it's the eye ability to identify each product when before you got it and after it's left you then we have our consumer complaint program and here we glean a lot of information these are the main points on the consumer complaint program that we need to make sure that we include there's a good on the FDA website there's a really good form that you can get in questions to ask I would have that all printed up in my consumer complaint program ready to use because again you're going to get a consumer complaint right in the middle of your being really busy then we have our food defense training and on the FDA website we have our vulnerability and our mitigating strategies and that's all looking at it walks you through looking at your process and exactly questions to ask and how you can answer them to evaluate your program you could use third-party audits feedback from inspections but the most important thing is your self-evaluation so in conclusion developing a food safety and food defense program is essential maintaining an efficient and effective programming has to be ongoing food safety must be as actively pursued at pursued as any part of your business and on the last page of your handout we I gave you our contact and I'm really interested I'm actually just very very interested in food safety and a lot of aspects and feel free to contact us if there's a question that you think we could ask is do you have any questions it seems like there'd be a lot of documentation to this is there anything you would suggest as far as that any kind of program or any kind of where do you get an outline to keep all this together is there anything you would suggest okay that's a very good question how do you start this this is like this is really overwhelming there's a lot of parts to it and that's what I put in our SARS grants and I put like I said I put step-by-step and there I use the FDA website because there's no sense to recreate wheels actually you'll get yourself in trouble if you try to recreate too many wheels with this but yes there's absolutely forms that you need as far as how the food safety they don't care generally they're in loose-leaf notebooks and you have a section that you know starts off with your standard operating procedures and you have a section then with your hazard analysis because it kind of it kind of flows from one to the other and then you have your preventive controls and then that brings you you can't do those unless you have a support supply chain program where you're checking that the product that you're using in your product is safe and so they all flow together so I absolutely do it's on our website if you need more information please contact me I'll be glad I mean that's exactly what I love to do those kind of things so I'll be glad to help you with that and as Linda mentioned all this information is also on the SARE website with her project report so if you go to the first page of her handout you can either search by her last name or by the project number which is this FNC 13-918 on the front page so if you go to the national SARE website which is www.sare.org click on the project reports tab and then you can search for this information she's like she said she put together lists of all the different websites that you should go to and step by step how you should try and put this together yeah I think this is a very exciting time that when food safety a long time ago I went to a meeting and it was on adding humor this is not anything I can add humor to I'm just sorry but it was it was a very good program this is stuck in my mind and this has sort of been my mantra in the on the side of the crowd there was a woman that said alone and as the rest of us would laugh because he was entertaining she would not laugh at the end she raised her hand and she said I appreciate what you're doing you're trying to make food safety interesting so people learn I lost my four-year-old son to a food born illness please don't let any other four-year-olds die and so I think that's what we have to keep in mind that that's our business if we're producing something it's our business to make sure that every four-year-old has a fifth birthday