Keep It Safe
Retailers can protect consumers — and their brand's reputation — by taking steps to enhance food safety within the prepackaged lunchmeat space.
Prepackaged lunchmeat long has been a convenient, tasty staple that's a mainstay in lunchboxes and a perfect option for quick at-home meals. And over the years, many retailers have introduced high-quality, value-minded store brand alternatives to national and regional brand lunchmeat favorites.
Food safety snafus here, however — leading to problems ranging from product spoilage to listeriosis outbreaks — could prove very harmful to the reputation of both the store brand (and all products under it) and the retailer. So retailers will want to pay very close attention to own-brand lunchmeat-related food safety efforts both inside and outside the store.
Eye on the manufacturer
Critical to food safety on the lunchmeat side is selection of a store brand manufacturer with a strong food safety focus — one that is also at the forefront of the industry in terms of infrastructure and knowledge of the latest developments here, explains Michael Quint, vice president and chief customer officer, sales, marketing and R&D for West Liberty Foods of West Liberty, Iowa.
"Second, they need to establish a partnership with their manufacturer to ensure that communication is flowing in both directions to deal with any issues and so they can take advantage of any new developments," he says.
Although he admits that from the standpoint of pure risk, the lunchmeat industry has come a long way, Jim Wisner, president of Libertyville, Ill.-based Wisner Marketing Group, says retailers also need to understand the difference between cost and price when choosing a manufacturer. In other categories, many companies learned the importance of that difference the hard way, he notes, when they opted to save a penny or two by choosing products from the now-defunct Peanut Corporation of America instead of products from the competition, which boasted a much stronger quality assurance process.
"Never, never sacrifice quality," he stresses.
"Focus on value to the consumer. Whether your price spread is 35 cents or 37 cents makes absolutely no difference to the consumer, but that two cents can buy you an awful lot in terms of product quality."
Retailers also need to validate and vet the manufacturer's processes, Wisner notes. And they need to call on professionals to do so. But with the advent of the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), that job just got easier, he adds — retailers could simply demand that the manufacturer be certified to GFSI-recognized schemes such as the Safe Quality Food program or the British Retail Consortium standard.
"It is really a good format, a good thing for the industry," he says. "At least it gives you a floor in terms of what expectations are."
Packaging's a benefit
The fact that prepackaged lunchmeat is, well, already packaged actually works in its favor when it comes to food safety.
"There are fewer chances to introduce microbial, chemical or physical contaminants than with deli meats that are sliced in store," says Alan Hiebert, education information specialist for the Madison, Wis.-based International Dairy-Deli-Bakery Association (IDDBA). "However, existing bacteria in a sealed package will stay there and will grow — rapidly if the products are stored outside of proper holding temperatures."
To further enhance food safety here, retailers should make sure the packaging design is tested to ensure it can withstand the environment in which it will be placed, Quint says, and that it delivers the shelf life needed to succeed in the marketplace.
Think inside the store
The steps employees take in-store to maximize food safety around own-brand lunchmeat are critical, too, of course.
"To reduce food safety risks, store personnel should, among other things, check temperatures of incoming products and reject those that are out of proper range," Hiebert explains.
They should also check for and reject broken or otherwise compromised packaging, he adds.
Easy-to-follow robust procedures will ensure better compliance, notes Lee Johnson, Ph.D., vice president of technical services for West Liberty Foods.
"Examples are automatic temperature recorders with alarms, [using] pre-packaged products to utilize the vendors' elaborate food safety efforts to their fullest, and [simplifying] the cleaning to ensure better compliance," he says.
Quint believes today's retailers are very good at ensuring the proper handling of their products along the supply chain through placement in the store.
"Diligence is still key, however, to ensure that their procedures are followed and that the ordering process is ensuring maximum remaining shelf life upon stocking in the store," he says.
And employee education is critical to food-safety enhancement within the store brand lunchmeat space — or any other product category — Hiebert stresses.
"Basic food safety knowledge is not just nice to know — it can be a life and death matter," he explains.
To help retailers here, IDDBA produced and offers a free program for supermarket associates called "Introduction to Food Safety," Hiebert notes. The program is available on the IDDBA website at www.iddba.org.
Finally, it is important to educate consumers on the importance of food safety, Hiebert says.
"Stores should have information available in all their communication media — web, mobile media, social media, print — telling customers to get their perishable purchase home and into the refrigerator as soon as possible," he says. "Stores also can promote their dedication to food safety by selling home refrigerator thermometers and showing their customers how to use them."