When it comes to safety, bakers institute their own internal checks and balances. But, many advocate for an industry standard.

The New York Times featured a story on March 16, 2009 that explored standardization practices, in response to the recent salmonella outbreak from peanut butter produced by a Peanut Corporation of America plant in southwest Georgia. The job of monitoring food plants to ensure food safety, the article revealed, largely rests on bakeries themselves.

Commercial bakeries commonly rely on third-party audits, such as those conducted by AIB International, Manhattan, Kan. But bakers may follow other standards and practices as well, usually good manufacturing practices (GMPs), says Mark Jarvis, C.E.O., Steritech Food Safety, Charlotte, N.C.

GMPs call for the documentation of every aspect of the manufacturing process. If the documentation showing how the product was made and tested isn't in order, then the product does not meet the required specification and is considered adulterated.

Bakers or the customers they supply often request third-party audits to demonstrate they meet their essentially self-imposed practices and standards, Jarvis says.

Food companies also increasingly require their suppliers to undergo audits as a way to ensure safety and minimize liability, says Alana Elliott, founder and president, Nonuttin' Foods Inc., Vancouver Island, Canada. But these audits aren't standardized to a particular set of regulations that govern the entire baking industry, Jarvis says. “It's very confusing, with no one audit the same as the next,” he adds.

Standards in harmony

The lack of uniform standards coupled with growing food safety concerns have meant that many U.S. manufacturers of late have called for what Jarvis termed a harmonizing of disparate standards into one globally accepted benchmark manufacturing standard.

The Safe Quality Food (SQF) standard may be the answer, Jarvis says. The international standard, managed by the Food Marketing Institute (FMI), is a HACCP-based food safety and quality risk management system. While HACCP is a food safety program, SQF is designed to manage both food safety and quality.

The SQF program is divided into three levels, the first of which is food safety fundamentals and GMPs. The second level is a HACCP food safety plan, where food safety hazards and critical control points are identified and their monitoring methods and corrective actions are established. The third level comprises food safety and quality management; here, auditors assess food safety and product quality risks, according to the FMI.

Steritech sees many bakers looking to implement under this standard as more retailers — notably Wal-Mart — require their suppliers certify their food management systems against the SQF standard requirements, Jarvis notes. “The SQF standard holds wholesale bakers to a much higher standard than they're used to,” Jarvis adds, whose company audits against that standard.

“This is like taking good manufacturing practices and ramping them up to a different level to require a higher level of compliance around food safety and quality practices,” Jarvis says. “It's going to require effort on the bakers' part to get quality assurance programs in line with these new standards.”

In Canada, the search for a standardization system is much the same, notes Elliott. Because the Canadian government doesn't mandate a particular standard or requirement wholesale bakers have to meet, bakeries hold themselves to the same patchwork of standards and regulations as their U.S. counterparts.

Like the U.S., Canada has recently experienced recalls from contaminated food that made it into the supply chain. Last summer, Canada saw a deadly outbreak of listeriosis linked to meat products produced in a Toronto plant.

“I think the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is scrambling to try to come up with more specifications,” Elliott says. “So far there are a lot of suggestions — like good manufacturing practices — but when it comes to specifics, unless we're certified by an outside body like AIB, we're creating our own protocols.”

Regulating the “free-from” industry

One significant problem Elliott and bakeries like hers face is the lack of regulations and standards for those supplying the growing market for allergen-free or gluten-free bakery products. This particular gap in regulation is frustrating to bakers like Elliott who seek ways to assure retailers and consumers their products truly are free from particular ingredients, such as peanuts and dairy products, as well as substances like gluten.