AUTHOR: BRUCE HAIN, STAFF
Date: Mar 06, 2009
“Happiness is makin’ bacon.”
That’s more than just a slogan at Holly Park Meat Packers near Cookstown.
The company, tucked away on the 9th Conc. just west of town, is celebrating a rather significant recognition for one of its products.
At a banquet held on Saturday, Feb. 21, Holly Park’s Phoenix End to End bacon captured a silver award at the Ontario Independent Meat Producers (OIMP) annual conference. More than 100 premium meat or poultry products were submitted for a chance to be crowned in one of 12 categories. The top three entries from each category were selected based on the judges’ combined scores.
They included ham, country style bacon, cold cuts, deli roasts, fresh sausage and home meal replacement. Food industry professionals and media evaluated the entries.
“The Ontario Finest Meat Competition is intended to promote the innovative, high quality products that Ontario’s meat processors have to offer,” said Laurie Nicol, executive director of the OIMP. “We hope this competition educates consumers and retailers on the quality and variety of Ontario meat and poultry products.”
The OIMP is a voluntary, non-profit organization representing 180 processors from across the province. The Ontario meat and poultry industry contributes more than $6.5 billion a year to the economy and represents 20 per cent of the food manufacturing industry.
Lilly Vacca, Holly Park’s bacon production manager, said, “This year, the competition was a little different. Homegrown Ontario was incorporated into competition. Any product submitted had to be homegrown. We’re really proud about that.”
Homegrown Ontario is a labeling system for veal, lamb, and pork that were raised, finished and processed in Ontario. The program was introduced in 2007.
Entries in the bacon category were judged on seven attributes:
• visual appeal
• consumer appeal
• uniqueness
• appearance
• flavour
• texture
• aroma
Winning the silver award “was great,” Vacca says. “It was very exciting and a huge sense of achievement.”
For team member Karen Dipoce, “I think it’s fantastic. I’ve been here seven years and it’s terrific to be recognized for your work.”
In a typical year, 140,000, 10 lb. boxes of Phoenix bacon are shipped from the plant.
And “That’s just side bacon,” Vacca says. “They mostly go to the food services industry, then to wholesalers, then to restaurants.”
In business for 30 years, Holly Park started out in a 2,000 square foot abattoir supplying mostly veal.
Today, two operations, the one near Cookstown, the other in Caledon, process beef, veal, lamb and bacon. The Cookstown plant recently underwent a 28,000 square foot expansion and employs up to 60 staff. The company also processes halal, kosher, natural and organic products and offers custom processing.
Holly Park’s owner and founder, Tony Facciolo, is the OIMP president.
“Membership in Ontario Independent Meat Processors has grown recently,” Vacca adds.
“We have been registering in the product competition for many years and each year, we have improved our process with help from the comments on that evaluation.”
Bruce Hain
BOLTON, Ontario – Canada’s Economic Action plan is delivering real results for the meat packing and processing sector in Ontario. Member of Parliament David Tilson (Dufferin-Caledon) announced a $1.5-million investment in Holly Park Meat Packers through the Government of Canada’s Slaughter Improvement Program.
“Investing in Holly Park Meat Packers will help increase their slaughter capacity, cut costs and improve operations making the industry more profitable and competitive,” said Mr. Tilson. ”This is one more way that Canada’s Economic Action plan is strengthening the Canadian economy, helping the meat packing and processing sector and investing in the riding of Dufferin-Caledon.”
Founded in 1979, Holly Park Meat Packers is one of Ontario’s largest provincially inspected meat processing facilities and employs 100 people in its Cookstown and Caledon locations.
This federal investment will allow Holly Park to redesign their facility and purchase and install new equipment and technology, giving farmers the opportunity to access niche markets. The company will also use this investment to develop and implement training of new procedures required to become a federally inspected facility.
The Government of Canada’s $50-million Slaughter Improvement Program makes federal loans available to support sound business plans aimed at reducing costs, increasing revenues and improving operations of red meat packing and processing operations in Canada. Last month’s budget provided an additional $10 million for the program.
With more than $20 billion in sales, the red meat industry is the single largest employer in the food industry in Canada.
For more information on this program, visit www.agr.gc.ca/slaughterhouse.
For more information on Canada’s Economic Action Plan, visit www.actionplan.gc.ca.
Source : Agriculture and Agri-Food CanadaDouble-click to edit text, or drag to move.
BOLTON (Marketwire) - Canada's Economic Action plan is delivering real results for the meat packing and processing sector in Ontario. Member of Parliament David Tilson (Dufferin-Caledon) announced a $1.5-million investment in Holly Park Meat Packers through the Government of Canada's Slaughter Improvement Program.
"Investing in Holly Park Meat Packers will help increase their slaughter capacity, cut costs and improve operations making the industry more profitable and competitive," said Mr. Tilson. "This is one more way that Canada's Economic Action plan is strengthening the Canadian economy, helping the meat packing and processing sector and investing in the riding of Dufferin-Caledon."
Founded in 1979, Holly Park Meat Packers is one of Ontario's largest provincially inspected meat processing facilities and employs 100 people in its Cookstown and Caledon locations.
This federal investment will allow Holly Park to redesign their facility and purchase and install new equipment and technology, giving farmers the opportunity to access niche markets. The company will also use this investment to develop and implement training of new procedures required to become a federally inspected facility.
The Government of Canada's $50-million Slaughter Improvement Program makes federal loans available to support sound business plans aimed at reducing costs, increasing revenues and improving operations of red meat packing and processing operations in Canada. Last month's budget provided an additional $10 million for the program.
With more than $20 billion in sales, the red meat industry is the single largest employer in the food industry in Canada.
For more information on this program, visit www.agr.gc.ca/slaughterhouse.
For more information on Canada's Economic Action Plan, visit www.actionplan.gc.ca.
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FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
Media Relations
613-773-7972
1-866-345-7972
or
Office of the Honourable Gerry Ritz
Meagan Murdoch
Press Secretary
Announcer
Holly Park Meat Packers is one of those pioneering companies in Ontario that have recently implemented a full traceability program.
Holly Park is a family meat-packing operation, with a farm in Rockwood, Ontario – where they keep their own animals, together with those they buy direct from other producers, and from the stockyards – as well as a slaughter facility in Bolton and a processing plant in Cookstown
Regardless of the commodity or type of operation, traceability is best defined as the ability to trace a food product every step of the way – essentially, every INPUT, all through the PRODUCTION process, and every OUTPUT.
Mary Vacca, Holly Park Meat Packers.
Every animal has an ear tag. So what we decided to do is to scan every ear tag and have that particular ear tag number follow it through the whole system all the way to shipping, to the supermarket, to the food service area, wherever we are shipping that product to.
Announcer
And so, the traceability system keeps a full record of every INPUT – whether the animal came from their own herd or someone else’s; the date the animal came onto the farm; the truck and the driver; the animals weight and condition; feeds; medicines; and the date it went to the abattoir, and on to the packing-house.
Announcer
Holly Park Meat Packers have been tracing things back manually for some time. But now, with a customized version of Minotaur software, they’re able to capture the information from the cattle RFID ear tags automatically, using RFID PANNEL READERS, directly into one central database to produce a UCC code that follows the product throughout the rest of the process.
Mary Vacca, Holly Park Meat Packers.
Everything is recorded using the UCC code. When I punch in that UCC code onto my system, it will tell me where that animal came from, if it's been broken down into pieces different pieces in different boxes, it will tell me which boxes may contain one of those pieces.
Announcer
Cuts from as many as ten different animals may be packed together in one box, and each animal could wind up in numerous different boxes – and all of that, and other information is recorded throughout the production process.
And finally, all of the outputs are recorded, including the truck it goes on and the date; the customer it goes to; the sales order, and the invoice information are all recorded.
Mary Vacca, Holly Park Meat Packers
The information in our system tells us exactly where everything is, which plant, whether it's in a hanging state or in a boxed state, whether it's gone to the customer yet, and if it has gone to the customer, which customer has received that product.
Announcer
Of course, it’s all very accurate, and that makes it very useful in making all sorts of management decisions. And the ability to track an individual piece of meat all through the system offers all kinds of benefits – for everyone in the value chain.
Tony Facciolo, Holly Park Meat Packers
Well, one of the benefits for us is age-verification, because with SRM, the last for five years have been a real headache for meat-packing plants. So if we can prove that animal is under 30 months -- no matter what the dentition says -- it makes our life much more easy.
Mary Vacca, Holly Park Meat Packers
Before we started with this system, if we wanted to trace anything back, we could trace it back to that day's production. But we could never trace it back to the animal that came into our plant; where now, we can not only trace it back to that day's production but we can trace it back to the ear tag of the particular animal that came into the building.
Announcer
Electronic inventory management, of course – in the case of Holly Park Meat Packers – makes it a lot easier to coordinate their three separate facilities, while servicing customers that have come to expect next-day deliver
Companies with traceability systems achieve many benefits for their business:
They improve inventory control
They decrease costs by reducing waste and inventory
They can easily verify product claims
They are able to perform an effective product recall
OIMP’s (Ontario Independent Meat Processors) Food Safety page: http://www.oimp.ca/FoodSafety.php
CFIA’s (Canadian Food Inspection Agency) website: http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/toce.shtml
Ontario’s Meat Inspection System web page: http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/food/inspection/meat-insp.htm
CAHI (Canadian Animal Health Institute) website: http://www.cahi-icsa.ca/comm-factsheets-food.php
Copyright © 2004 Holly Park Meat Packers Inc.
