The whey to food safety

Whey is a by-product of the manufacture of cheese, and anything that comes into contact with it throughout the supply chain can influence its quality and safety.

Arla Foods Ingredients supplies whey ingredients for infant nutrition and medical applications, and maintaining high quality and food safety is particularly important for these vulnerable consumers. The company’s long-term strategy, ‘Safely delivering the wonders of whey’, highlights the measures it takes to fulfil its duty of care to customers. This includes:

• Rigorous quality control: As many as 280 checks are carried out, including numerous farm-to-factory quality checks before whey arrives at the company’s production plants, and more checks before it leaves as a finished product.
• Cold processing: Strict upstream controls allow the company to use a cold processing technique which preserves the nutritional and functional qualities of protein.
• Industry-leading farm assurance programs: The company only sources whey from trusted suppliers and has farm assurance programs in place for all of them. These ensure the ethical treatment of cows and the quality of milk.
• Proactive quality and food safety culture: As well as providing intensive on-the-job training, the company is recruiting a growing number of staff with backgrounds in pharma and biotech to add to its existing expertise and further improve its quality and food safety procedures.

“Food safety is a top priority for our customers and a growing concern for consumers. It only takes one adverse incident to completely destroy the reputation of a brand,” explained Yvette Kaster, Director for Global Quality, Environmental Health and Safety at Arla Foods Ingredients. “To meet the high standards our customers rightly expect, Arla Foods Ingredients has adopted a proactive, company-wide quality mindset. Through our new campaign, we aim to demonstrate how seriously we take our duty of care to customers and end consumers alike.”

For more information about the campaign, click here.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/bert_phantana