Driven to increase the quality of food in the nation's school lunch program (NSLP), the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) undertook an ambitious agenda a few years ago to provide schools with a consistent supply of safe and low fat ground beef.

Beginning in 2003, AMS established a statistically based vendor certification and supply chain quality management program for the purchase of ground beef for NSLP under the Technical Requirements Schedule - GB-2003. The program has enjoyed considerable success in reducing pathogen levels and controlling fat content in ground beef that is provided to school children.

Program Dynamics

The TRS-GB is structured to guarantee wholesome and nutritional product for NLSP. Prospective ground beef suppliers must submit a documented description of their process (the technical proposal) to the AMS Contracting Officer that demonstrates they are capable of producing product that complies with program needs. Once they complete a satisfactory audit, the supplier is eligible to bid for the program.

Under the program, Meat Grading and Certification (MGC) Branch agents enforce continuous auditing and in-plant monitoring as long as the contractor is in the program. Microbial and fat SPC charts and graphs for microbial levels and fat content are monitored for process assessment purposes on a daily basis.

For fat limitation requirements, the producer is required to test each production lot of ground beef and plot the results on control charts and histograms using their own laboratory. MGC agents direct separate sample selection from the first 20 lots of new programs. If the process is determined to be reliable, then AMS sampling is reduced to twice weekly. AMS Designated Laboratories (ADLs) conduct tests on samples selected by AMS. To determine reliability, the histograms generated by the ADLs are compared with the contractor's histograms. The process average (mean) and Cpk value are compared. If there is discernible difference between the charts, then the process is declared unreliable and the contractor can no longer participate in the program.

ADLs are also required to analyze for microbial, indicator and pathogen levels in both the boneless beef and finished ground beef. The ADL role is to provide the testing for both the vendor certification and the ongoing supply chain quality management phases of the program and to deliver the information in SPC control charts and process capability reports.

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Testing Provider

Silliker, Inc. is an ADL and has provided microbiological and quality testing services for ground beef in accordance with AOAC, FSIS, and Compendium of Methods. Under the AMS administered program, testing vendors must demonstrate their capability to meet contract specifications and provide data and SPC deliverables with each test lot. To accomplish this, Silliker employs USDA approved cultural and rapid test methodologies and uses NWA Quality Analyst to provide data and SPC charts to AMS and ground beef suppliers.

"We work hard to ensure our quality systems and client services are second to none in the food testing industry," says Dr. Michele Smoot, Director of Microbiology for Silliker, Inc.

Delivering the Quality Analyst SPC charts with the NSL reports, according to Dr. Smoot, has proved to be an important value-add to the normal reporting packages.

"In today's food industry, timely information is integral in proactively managing product safety and quality," says Dr. Smoot. "The report capabilities of NWA Quality Analyst allow ground beef vendors to view their analytical data over specified time frames, detect processing trends of concern, and, if needed, take corrective action."

Complementary Role

The ground beef vendors find Silliker's role usefully complements their own efforts. Stan Mendell, Westland Meat Company, Chino, CA, has developed aggressive SPC and quality control programs. This is one reason that Westland was awarded the Supplier of the Year for the 2004-2005 National School Lunch Program.

Says Mendell, "Silliker's posting of the results on eSTAR works very well for us. We can check ourselves and our own results against a certified lab, and help improve our performance."

The boneless beef supplier is assessed for process stability by control charts and for capability to meet specifications by histograms and calculated process capability indices.

TRS-GB has been a major success in providing better quality and safer nutrition for the school lunch program. The TRS-GB focuses on two product parameters affecting food safety and nutritional quality - pathogen levels and fat content. In the four years of using the SPC based supply chain quality management program, the AMS can point to major improvements in the effectiveness of the ground beef procurement program:

• Salmonella incidence rate has been reduced from 5.5% to 0.9%
• AMS has used the program to move the target fat content from 22% to 15%.

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Silliker has a major hand in making this improvement happen ranging from helping the vendor certification process to providing the data and analytics for the ongoing supply chain quality management. The company's role as an ADL places the lab in a core position in making this happen.

The NSLP results have shown that using the ADL to provide SPC analysis and reporting to producers helps improve the safety and quality of production. It demonstrates the value proposition of a reference lab such as Silliker in providing routine analysis of food safety and quality parameters, SPC analytics, and reporting.

NSLP has helped Silliker refine the concept of how to incorporate SPC and related analytics into customer services and add value to the customer reporting and consulting package.

About the author: Jeff Cawley is Vice President Market Development, Northwest Analytical. Based in Portland, OR, NWA is a leading provider of SPC software tools.

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