Every day, tables around the country feature internationally sourced nuts, fruit and cheese that are hard to imagine being without. But when healthful food becomes contaminated with dangerous – if not deadly – pathogens, it gives pause to the natural trust that is bestowed upon the food industry.
Shaping a clean, green food network
The business of food involves the same exacting and unending endeavour: food safety. That’s true whether a business is serving dagwood dogs at a hometown festival, or importing organic frozen berries from the serene, faraway forests of the Balkans.
Keeping food safe up and down the supply chain is no mystery. In-field hygiene prevents viral and bacterial cross-contamination like norovirus and e coli. Rapid, sterile processing stops a host of bacteria like salmonella from ever taking hold. Reliable, consistent refrigeration ensures proper food preservation, preventing listeria and Staphylococcus.
As international importers of frozen berries, the most important first step we can take to ensure the purity of these foods is to work with suppliers who invest in the business of food safety.
Our wild berry supplier in Serbia, for example, is top of the list when it comes to safe field, harvest and processing practices.
Investments in skill and technology
Their wild blueberries, strawberries, and blackberries are hand-harvested by small crews of long-time residents, without the use of tools. Not only do these pickers consider the pristine forests their backyard, they intrinsically know what the perfect berry tastes and looks like.
Largely sourced from the Unesco Heritage site of Golija, Viking’s wild organic berry collection comes from an area where the introduction of potential contaminants like fertilizers and pesticides is unheard of and prohibited. Our community of pickers are only permitted to pick up debris and clear away foreign material, which they do as a normal course of their daily lives.
The processing plants are close at hand, ready to immediately wash, sort and then individually freeze each little nutrient-packed berry. Every year, the company invests in its processing and storage equipment to consistently improve on its abilities to provide quality, food-safe, food for people around the world to enjoy.
World-standard certification
Each processing plant is fully certified to the highest food safety standards. These adhere to IFC’s rigorous 250 regulation requirements, as well as the exacting requirements of BRAC and IFO.
In addition to its strict food safe and ethically sourcing, our supplier also invests in green energy by installing solar panels on rooftops to reduce the cost of robust and necessary cold storage to the environment. The wild collection is held cold thanks in part to a 50 W solar generator.
While PaMin stands out in its field, their strides are shoulder to shoulder with our other suppliers. These firms also take great care to make sure the products they are so proud of stay healthy and wholly enjoyable. We look forward to sharing more stories of how our suppliers stay food-safe as a matter of course and heritage.
