MOUNT VERNON — With food safety
still the center of concern for families across the county, local butchers and
meat retailers assure they follow strict guidelines to keep food safety the top
priority for consumers.
Lanning’s Foods at 1033 Newark Road in Mount Vernon is one of the area’s
largest suppliers of choice cut meats. The business was purchased from Bernard
Lanning in 1989 by co-owners Sam and Steve Gilardi.
A very stringent routine of safety procedures is followed by Lanning’s
to assure the safety of their meats. A USDA inspector is on-site regularly to
check the records concerning food safety practices.
“We do our own safety checks while the USDA goes through our books and
makes sure we follow all the procedures,” said Sam Gilardi. “It’s
kind of like checking the checker.” Certificates from food safety audits
can be viewed at Lanning’s Foods’ website.
“We follow Good Manufacturing Practices as far as using clean garments,
not putting [tubs] on the floor that go on tables, monitoring cleanliness in
the coolers, wearing hair nets, clean garments, and the like,” said Steve
Gilardi. “We do handle beef, pork, poultry, lamb and cooked products, using
separate rooms in handling certain products. In other instances, we wash and
sanitize in between the cutting process on the tables.”
Steve Gilardi explained how they test regularly for E. coli, sending samples
to an independent lab for testing. “We do our own testing, while the USDA
does their testing also,” he said.
Lanning’s also follows procedures in the Hazardous Analysis of Critical
Control Points system, administered by the Food and Drug Administration. HACCP
is a management system in which food safety is addressed through the analysis
and control of biological, chemical and physical hazards from raw material production,
procurement and handling, to manufacturing, distribution and consumption of the
finished product.
“We’ve never failed on this,” said Sam, explaining how all
meats follow a cold chain from the time they are brought into the plant to the
time they are put on a truck to leave. When meats are taken in from a truck,
they are temped and go to a cooling room. They then go to a cutting room where
temperatures are still consistently kept at a set temperature. Meats are kept
in color-coded tubs to avoid any cross-contamination.
