Recipe and process approval?

[HeirloomChef]

Are there any concise federal guideline documents or is it really entirely up to your process authority?

Tomorrow I go to take a certification class/exams to start working on a food processor license, mostly in hopes of getting some of my questions answered during class.

I've attempted to ask questions of various officials regarding the viability of doing hot sauce production on a small scale legally. I know from everything I've read, a commericial kitchen, standard food saftey regarding contaminants, making sure your PH is below 4.0 and hot filling at 180+ seems fairly standard. I know I need to submit a recipe for approval, samples for PH testing and may or may not have to submit samples for lab testing and/or nutritional information testing. Submitting a recipe that contains 'unusual ingredients' such as pinapple and mango, not to mention the exotic peppers that don't show up in their standard database seems to be a trigger for requiring submitting 2 different test lots for all the lab tests. Unfortunately it seems to me to be somewhat arbitrary, as there is no overall documentation of the requirements. It certainly makes the idea of making a 5 gallon batch of something just to see what people think of it an expensive process.

The answer I got on my questions about drying and smoking peppers and making powders was that they couldn't even tell me who to talk to.

I talked to a restaurant owner yesterday who said they'd started down the road of getting some of their sauces made in the restaurant available in the local grocery stores. They figured it would be straightforward, as they were obviously already making stuff for sale to the public out of an inspected facility already, just not for retail sale. They ended up giving up and using a co-packer to produce their private label sauces in another state because it was such a hassle. And this was just for tomato based pasta sauces. Unfortunately the only copacker operation I've found who will even work on small lot sizes considers a small lot a 150 gallon batch and was less than enthusastic about using ingredients (such as exotic peppers) that they couldn't just order up from a wholesale supplier.

I recently read "A Trip to the Beach" a book about the owners of Blanchard's restaurant in Anguilla. In there they told the story of how they started the Blanchards & Blanchards sauce and dressing company in their apartment and were already selling to high end retailers and specialty shops by the time they moved to a real production facility. I'm thinking a lot of the sauce companies out there have to start this way or close, as there doesn't seem to be an effective legal way of starting with small lot sauces.

 

[salsalady]

HeirloomChef,

you'll need to deal with 2 different entities. The Process Authority is someone with a food science degree who will review your recipe and process and will dictate how it is to be made, packed, etc. Your local health district or state health department is who you will deal with for your facility, food processing license, and they are the ones who will make sure you are following how the PA said to make the sauce. For myself, I deal with Washington State Dept of Ag.

I know lots of sauces are being sold out of home kitchens, but it really ain't the way to go. Selling a home-processed sauce here on THP is no big deal to me. Someone who wholesales a home-processed sauce to a store or restaurant is not cool and puts everyone at risk of a huge liability.

It's not that difficult to find a commercial kitchen to use. I've said it before, just look around your area for a community center, church, fire hall, grange hall, fraternal organization, shared use kitchen...there's tons of places availabe if you think outside the box.

Your local health inspector is a good resource to draw on. They might know of a place in a neighboring town you might not think of.

Good Luck,
Ann

 

[biscgolf]

i too am getting ready to take the process class.

Ann is correct in that there are 2 entities to deal with... local health department and department of agriculture is the case here in virginia as well.

i have attempted to find commercial kitchen space for lease in my area but have had no luck as of yet. (this includes talking with my VDACS inspector) if i was liquid enough to do it i'd build one and lease space out myself... looks like setting one up in my unfinished basement or a no longer used milking parlor on our farm is going to be the option i can afford however. i really don't want to have to go the co-packer route...

 

[HeirloomChef]

I've talked to the process authority, however I found them to be less than helpful with my nonstandard ingredients and questions. I'm hopeful that once I've gotten started on actual licensing they'll be more willing to answer my questions. If I knew what it was that raises red flags on recipes I'd skip ones that use those for now.

I'm lucky in that there is a commercial kitchen right in town where I've already done other work, plus I have access to several restaurant kitchens plus the church kitchen if I wanted to explore other options. The potential problem may be with the products I'm interested in making and potentially having issues with other people using the space objecting. The local inspector told me that I may be best off putting in a few pieces of used equipment in an unused building up at the farm where I wouldn't have that issue but the owner of the commercial kitchen is willing to give it a try. I'd rather start without going through the extra hassle of trying to get a facility licensed, and the family farm is a couple of hours drive from where we live now.

I'm currently frustrated with not knowing what is going to be easiest to produce and what's going to cause me problems/cost money. I'd love to do powders, but when I asked locally about that they said I probably couldn't do it if it the smell would be evident outside the building, which of course it would. They were the one that suggested the farm, as the cows wouldn't be able to object.

 

[biscgolf]

what i find most frustrating about the whole deal is the fact that the inspectors themselves don't even really have access to a codified set of do's and don'ts...

i get told different things by different inspectors... one told me i had to have an inspected facility to hang herbs to dry... someone who holds the same job in a different section of the state told me exactly the opposite. i had a hellish time convincing the inspector that microgreens are not sprouts... they looked at me like i was from mars when i asked about regs for smoking vegetables (peppers and tomatoes).

i grow produce for a living so it's not like i can afford to just skate by on this stuff... imo big food business and big agribusiness have just about lobbied and legislated the small entrepreneurial farmer/food producer to death...

 

[HeirloomChef]

what i find most frustrating about the whole deal is the fact that the inspectors themselves don't even really have access to a codified set of do's and don'ts...

i get told different things by different inspectors... one told me i had to have an inspected facility to hang herbs to dry... someone who holds the same job in a different section of the state told me exactly the opposite. i had a hellish time convincing the inspector that microgreens are not sprouts... they looked at me like i was from mars when i asked about regs for smoking vegetables (peppers and tomatoes).

i grow produce for a living so it's not like i can afford to just skate by on this stuff... imo big food business and big agribusiness have just about lobbied and legislated the small entrepreneurial farmer/food producer to death...

Yes! When I asked about smoking I got the same look you probably did. I followed up with an email with a link to http://www.boggycreekfarm.com/pages/larrys-smoke-dried-tomatoes.php to show them what I was talking about, and got the reply that they wouldn't even know where to start for something like that. In the picture on that page it looks like he's working in a home built smoker right out in the open, I think heads would explode if I tried to get something like that approved.

I think getting the right person is the whole key. The owner of the commercial kitchen told me I should just check with the authorities down by my folks to see if they were a little more accomodating with stuff like that.

The dried peppers and herbs thing really gets me. Do they think that people were dying left and right from eating something naturally dried vs one that was processed in an approved facility in an electric dehydrator?

Have you read "Everything I want to do is illegal"?

 

[biscgolf]

no, i haven't read it, it has been on my list for a while but i keep getting diverted... i have read some of salatin's other material and seen him speak though... his farm is less than 2 hours from here...

i agree completely that getting the right person is key.

our inspector here is sympathetic but also deathly afraid of stepping outside the box. she always brings to mind for me the old line from Cool Hand Luke... "Saying it's your job boss don't make it right."

 

[rooze]

HLC,

I presume you've read all about the WI 'Pickle Bill' which was signed into law in 2010. You can make stuff at home and sell it in various ways, to a limit of $5000 in annual sales. You can't sell it wholesale or out of state. There's a little ambiguity as to what comes under the pickle bill, in one place it says 'no sauces' yet salsas are permitted, which probably contain the same ingredients only in different proportions.
There's also a registry of approved recipes, that may be worth a look. I don't know if from a bacterial perspective there's any difference between a Jalapeno and a Bhut Jolokia, it's basically the same beast, so maybe there's a way to classify the hot ingredients as 'hot peppers' and not have to identify their specific species on the recipe? (I'm just thinking out loud here).
Here's an FAQ on the pickle bill which you've probably read already.
Another angle that I looked into is to ask your local licensed/shared kitchen for the names/contacts of people who might be using their facility and making a product similar to yours. You could then talk with them about forming some kind of co-op agreement, whereby they make your product, under their license at the local facility. You would be there to supervise the recipe/cooking, they would be utilizing their own license and knowledge of the processes. They may even have a fast-track to getting your recipe approved and tested if they determine that it's necessary. You'd have to pay them something, they might work on a small % of the items made or the items sold. That way you're passing the burden onto someone who already has the knowledge to handle it. If they're involved in wholesaling they'll have liability insurance and also outlets for the finished product. So I guess I'm saying a basic partnership is the way to start out, perhaps.
Another thing I'd do is talk with the licensed kitchen and get the name of the local State inspector and arrange a meeting face to face. I did that here in DC, he came to my facility, we sat down and had a couple of Spotted Cows and chatted for a couple hours. You'd be amazed the power these guys have and what they can sign-off.
Good luck

 

[HeirloomChef]

Well, I'm back from my course.

First, about the pickle bill: It seemed obvious that the pickle bill was not well thought of at the class. The fact that I'd mentioned trying to start under that may have been part of the issue I was having getting information. The pickle bill is supposed to only apply to those specific products with approved recipes using home canning jars and two piece lids and only sold at the named activities, i.e. farmers markets. They know many people are stretching the limits of what is actually covered, but the officials wouldn't give any real assistance to anyone thinking outside the official box until they'd gone through the process class and were on their way to getting a food processor license. A lot of the attendees were employees of some small processors, there was one other hot sauce startup guy there who was doing fermented sauces but I didn't get a chance to talk with him. At the end I heard him discussing the challenges he was having with one of the co-packer employees, needing a licensed facility to store the fermeting peppers for 90+ days.

The process class was probably 80% basic food safety and sanitation anyone who's ever had to take a health department course for foodservice management has already had. There was good information about some of the specific concerns for processing acidified foods and good coverage over the paperwork required to submit a recipe for process approval, filing the paperwork with the FDA, etc.

A supervisor for the dept of Agriculture was there and happily answered questions from me and the woman next to me for quite some time, both of us were interested in smoking and dehydrating products. She assured us they could work with us to come up with a reasonable solution but it would require licensing a facility. She said she thought there was someone in the state doing seasonal smoking with an outside smoker, basically they cut the product in an approved space and carried it to the smoker covered, then covered it before carrying it back in. She thought an unused milk parlor on my in-laws farm would probably require a good cleaning and a coat of paint but should be fine for licensing as a facility for dehydrating and smoking as long as the doors sealed and the walls and ceiling were in still in good repair. She gave us her card to call her if we had any difficulties with the local inspectors.

The bad news for me is that using any type of bottle that cannot be hermetically sealed won't get past process approval, i.e. no hot sauce woozy bottles with foam liners. Pretty much has to be a cap designed for hot fill and hold that can indicate the presence of a vacuum to get process approval. Doesn't matter how many products I can show doing it, unless I can show research data documenting that it's safe it's not getting signed off on.