Food Safety

HMC Farms considers the safety and quality of its’ products to be of the highest priority and we take it very seriously. We keep your food safe because it is the right thing to do.

Audits

Our fields and crews undergo annual Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) audits. GAP audits emphasize good employee hygiene, farming, and harvesting practices that are in place to produce a safe product. These practices include, but are not limited to, hygiene training for all employees, adhering to safe agricultural practices when applying anything to the crop or soil such as nutrients, pesticides, herbicides, etc., and testing the irrigation water annually for the presence of E. coli. The audit scores are consistently 90%, or above, which is considered an excellent rating.

The packing houses, cold storage facilities, and processing plant undergo annual Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) audits. The GMP audits monitor for compliance to practices that promote and protect the food safety of the product. These practices include such things as employee hygiene training and adherence, preventative maintenance, pest control, chemical control, sanitation, and supplier monitoring.
The GMP audits scores are also consistently 90%, or above.

The processing facility currently operates under a Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point Plan (HACCP). The packing houses will start operating under a HACCP Plan during the 2011 harvest season. A HACCP Plan requires a commitment from the company to have a team comprised of employees of varying responsibilities to work together to determine any food safety hazards that may occur during the harvest, transportation, processing, and packaging of the product . The team then determines how they are going to prevent, or control, these possible food safety hazards.

From Field to Fork

At HMC Farms we have always been committed to ensuring the safety of our fruit by investing in technology that allows us to monitor and trace every box of fruit. For example, all of our stone fruit is picked by hand and placed into bins in the field. These bins are labeled with all the information necessary for traceback to the field.

Traditional Farming

As part of the HMC Farms commitment to using sustainable farming practices we use pheromones instead of pesticides whenever there is an alternative available. Since our crops are grown in California, we adhere to one of the most stringent state regulations on pesticide use and application.

With that said, our residues are close to untraceable. For example, a woman could consume 263 servings and a child 176 servings of peaches in one day without any effect even if the peaches have the highest pesticide residue recorded for peaches by USDA.

A man could consume 439 servings of nectarines in one day without any effect even if the nectarines have the highest pesticide residue recorded for nectarines by USDA.

For more information on just how safe our product is please visit www.safefruitsandveggies.com .

Soil Nutrition

Every year HMC Farms does a routine soil analysis to ensure we are adding back any nutrients that are depleted during the season.
Nutrients that are put back into the ground are calcium, nitrogen, zinc, iron, magnesium and boron.