Every day at FrieslandCampina, we supply millions of people all over the world with all the goodness of milk in the form of products that play an important role in their nutrition and wellbeing. Throughout the dairy chain, we take responsibility for ensuring that our products and production methods are safe and meet the agreed specifications and government requirements.
The production of dairy is a careful process. Risk analyses, protocols and quality controls in the production chain keep the risk of errors to a minimum. These quality principles are no different on a farm than they are at a dairy production company. That’s why we use Foqus throughout our dairy production chain, from feeding the cows of our member dairy farmers, to supplying the products from our distribution centres. This is a uniform approach to comply with requirements and specifications for food safety, quality, working conditions, fire prevention and environmental care.
Quality is achieved by motivated people. The motivation to want to continuously improve therefore also plays a key role in Foqus. We have developed our uniform Foqus approach for our own production and distribution companies. Linked to this is Foqus for our suppliers.
Our member dairy farmers work with Foqus dairy farm. They are self-employed and together they own FrieslandCampina. And they supply us with milk.
We work with Foqus so that we can guarantee consumers, clients and government authorities that our products and production processes comply with specifications and requirements in the field of food safety, quality, working condition, fire safety and the environment.
Of course, these are always statutory requirements, but we also have additional requirements from customers. And where specifications are concerned, we reach agreements with clients about the composition of products and the production method.
This is also what forms the basis of the reliability of our branded products for you, as a consumer. You won’t find the Foqus name on our products. You choose our products first and foremost for the brand, such as Campina, Dutch Lady, Landliebe, Frisian Flag, Milner or Peak. The name ‘FrieslandCampina’, the business behind the brand, appears in very small type on the packaging.
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FrieslandCampina is a multinational producer of mainly dairy products. As a management system for quality, food safety, working conditions, fire safety and the environment, Foqus therefore affects our production and distribution companies.
And what about our member dairy farmers in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium? Together, our members own FrieslandCampina and each of them has their own dairy business. Our members are self-employed. They work with Foqus, too.
Our extensive experience has taught us that in the dairy industry, the quality of the end product starts at the farm. The challenge we face is to put our expertise into practice by managing that quality throughout the chain. Our member dairy farmers co-own FrieslandCampina and therefore feel an extra responsibility to ensure their farms form the basis for the quality and safety of the products supplied by FrieslandCampina.
To guarantee the quality in the chain and to learn as much as we can from one another and to enable us to maximise quality alignment, we have opted to adopt one Foqus system. But how Foqus applies at one of our production facilities for cheese or milk powder is of course totally different from how it applies at a self-employed dairy farmer’s business. After all, cheese preparation is a completely different process from feeding, caring for and milking cows.
The substance of the Foqus dairy farm system is being developed by the people in the FrieslandCampina organisation, but ultimately it is those responsible in the FrieslandCampina cooperative who have the final say. They make their decisions after they have consulted the member dairy farmers. At FrieslandCampina, we buy milk from non-members too. This milk must, of course, be of the same high quality. Naturally, we also apply the Foqus principles as much as possible to these dairy farmers.
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Foqus clearly and transparently demonstrates how we ensure that our products and processes comply with the requirements and agreed specifications.
Standards
Foqus therefore clearly shows what the standards are.
To guarantee quality and food safety using Foqus, we base Foqus on international and national rules and standards such as HACCP, ISO 9001, FSSC22000 and Codex, which include comprehensive risk analyses. There are also international standards for working conditions, fire prevention and environmental impact.
Specifications and customer wishes in Foqus are based on BRC and IFS, for example.
By using Foqus, we are also striving for continued improvement, such as better quality, lower failure costs and more robust production.
Controls and continuous improvement
Foqus indicates how we assess whether products and processes meet the standards. Foqus also makes employees and dairy farmers aware of their quality performance and provides them with tools to make continuous improvements.
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Foqus Food Safety & Quality in our production and distribution companies
Our policies and standards are compulsory for all FrieslandCampina business units. We have policies in place covering such aspects as good hygiene and production practices, tracking & tracing and crisis management.
FrieslandCampina business units have the freedom to decide how they apply these policies in their particular environment and for their specific products and customers, as long as they achieve the goal of Foqus. After all, the production of chilled desserts in Germany is slightly different from the production of milk powder with a very long shelf life. That places other requirements on tracking & tracing, for example. Standards relating to microbiology (including the approach to and control of undesirable materials in our products), for instance, but also food safety and packaging materials are compulsory at FrieslandCampina.
Of course, products and processes at our production and distribution sites are continuously monitored. Moreover, external, independent supervision is also carried out. And we work with internal audit teams. We have created teams of quality control managers at facilities that perform audits at other facilities. The business has is a QA council tasked with monitoring the quality results and the application of Foqus throughout the organisation as well as developing new policy.
Foqus dairy farm
For the member dairy farmers, Foqus has four key elements:
- Foqus Milk (the quality of the milk supplied, the milking and the refrigeration of the milk)
- Foqus Cow (health and housing of the cows)
- Foqus Production Process (quality of feed and water)
- Foqus Environment (cleanliness of the farm and the option for outdoor grazing)
In the Netherlands, members must comply with specific FrieslandCampina rules. For members in Germany and Belgium, FrieslandCampina uses existing national systems where possible, such as QM-Milch (Germany) and IKM (Belgium).
The dairy farmers are also monitored by independent bodies. This is done by taking samples from each milk delivery which are then tested for various elements. Regular inspections are carried out at the farms. To drive down the administrative burden and costs as much as possible, monitoring is increasingly being carried out using existing data, for example, animal welfare data.
Based on these results, a dairy farmer is assigned in one of the four quality categories: Excellent (more than good business practice and good milk quality for at least five years), Good (good business practice and continuous good milk quality for at least one year), Sometimes not good, and, very seldom, persistently not good. The quality categories have financial consequences as well as an impact on the frequency of the actual assessment of the business and even whether or not it is allowed to supply the milk.
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Foqus is the system we use to comply with international standards and requirements, such as those for food safety (HACCP) and quality (ISO, BRC). The actual certification of our production companies is evidence of this.
No one would argue about the taste and quality of our products. There are international quality championships for various dairy products in which we take part on a regular basis. In 2009, we won the ‘Bundesehrenpreis für Milcherzeugnisse’ in Germany (the highest German award for dairy products). At the end of 2009, we won two golden awards for our cheese at the World Cheese Awards.
Some 10% to 15% of our member dairy farmers are rated ‘Excellent’, owing to the quality of their business practice and the good quality of the milk supplied for at least five successive years. Some 60% of our member dairy farmers are rated ‘Good’ for Foqus for the whole year.
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