Food Safety

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Our Commitment

Cougle Commission Company is fully committed to the safety of our products. As a testament to our commitment to food safety, we provide letters of guarantee and quality assurance to each of our customers. Within those letters, we vow to provide wholesome products that are produced in accordance with all applicable Federal rules and regulations governing sanitary and safe food supply. Not only do we provide these letters, we actually follow through on our guarantees, as evidenced in the safe product we distribute each and every day.

USDA-Inspected

As a federally-inspected plant, inspectors from the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service inspect our plant and processing rooms on a daily basis. We work with these monitors to make sure that only safe and wholesome products leave our facility. Our Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) Program and Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) Plan reinforce this notion of food safety, and all of our employees receive comprehensive GMP and HACCP training annually, even those employees who do not set foot on the processing room floor. Food safety is not limited to our processing room employees. It is an awareness that permeates our entire company.

IMG_8096Our Suppliers

We only source our product from the finest poultry suppliers. In order to become an approved supplier of Cougle Commission Company, our suppliers must provide a litany of information to us, as we want to make sure that the product we bring into our plant is just as safe and wholesome as the product that we send out to our customers. To the extent we can, Cougle management will even make site visits to new suppliers to check on their operation.
The following is a brief synopsis of the type of information we require of all of our suppliers:

  • Continuing letter of guarantee
  • Evidence of a validated HACCP plan
  • Statement of participation in and adherence to the National Chicken Council's testing program for Avian Influenza
  • 24-hour emergency contact list in the event of a recall
  • Results from the supplier's most recent third-party GMP/food safety audit
  • Copy of the supplier's food defense plan
  • Copy of the supplier's animal welfare program
  • Copy of the supplier's allergen management program

Cougle takes food safety seriously, and we expect no less from our suppliers.

Third-Party Audits

To hold ourselves accountable, each fall we invite a third-party auditor into our facility to examine our GMPs and food safety systems. Silliker, Inc., an independent auditing company that services the food industry throughout the world, performs this audit on-site and provides an immediate assessment with detailed feedback. Sillker developed this audit specifically for food processors, and it encompasses the following areas:

  • Food safety systems
  • Quality systems
  • Grounds, building and equipment
  • Pest control
  • Employee practices
  • Receiving, storage and shipping
  • Plant sanitation
  • Processing
  • Food defense

In the spirit of transparency, we make the written findings from these audits available to all of our customers. Below, you will find our scores from each audit over the past several years…

Good Manufacturing Practices and
Food Safety Systems Audit Scores
2020: 98.8%
2019: 94.4%
2018: 95.2%
2017: 98.3%
2016: 95.6%
2015: 98.2%
2014: 98.6%
2013: 99.6%
2012: 99.2%
2011: 99.0%
2010: 99.1%
2009: 98.0%
2008: 96.4%
2007: 94.7%

We are extremely proud of our food safety record here at Cougle, and we strive to improve upon this record every day.