Specialist service
Dairy and chilled products
My background is dairy. Pasteurisation, cold chain, Listeria monitoring and the supplier standards the major retailers enforce — this is where I can tell you what an auditor will actually ask, rather than what a template says.
Who it's for
- Small milk, cream and cheese processors
- Yoghurt, gelato and chilled dessert makers
- Cheesemakers and artisan dairies
- Chilled ready-to-eat manufacturers
- Anyone licensed under Safe Food Production Queensland for dairy
What's included
- Pasteurisation verification and flow diversion records
- CIP validation and verification — time, temperature, concentration, flow
- Cold chain verification from storage through loadout to delivery
- Temperature mapping of coolrooms and stores
- Zoned environmental monitoring programme and Listeria trending
- Shelf life validation — study design, parameters and interpretation
- Traceability built for silo blending, not generic batching
- Retailer specification conformance
Why dairy is different
Dairy gets asked harder questions than most sectors, and they are usually validation questions. How do you know the pasteuriser achieves lethality. How do you know the CIP cleans. How do you know the shelf life is real. Monitoring records do not answer any of those — validation evidence does.
Environmental monitoring that finds things
A Listeria programme that never finds anything is usually swabbing the wrong places. Positives in the outer zones are expected in a working plant; the value of the programme is in finding them before they reach product, and in showing you acted on the pattern.
Silo blending and traceability
A batch can carry more than one raw milk intake, and a problem with one intake reaches every batch drawn from that silo until it is emptied and cleaned. Generic traceability records do not handle that, which is why a dairy traceability system has to be built for it from the start.
Retailer standards
If you supply a major retailer, their specification sits on top of the Code and is often stricter. Working to the Code alone is how a compliant business fails a retailer audit.
What it costs
A fixed fee, quoted before any work starts, with travel included in the number you are given. Never an hourly rate that grows.
The scoping call is free and takes fifteen minutes. If it turns out you need something smaller than you thought, I'll tell you.
Questions
Do you work with very small producers?
Yes. A single-vat cheesemaker has the same validation questions as a large plant, just fewer of them. The documentation should be proportionate to the operation.
Can you help with a Safe Food Production Queensland accreditation?
I can build the documentation it requires and explain the pathway. The accreditation itself is granted by Safe Food Production Queensland, and auditing under that legislation is done by auditors approved by them.
What about shelf life testing?
I can design the study and interpret the results, and explain the difference between a storage trial and a challenge study — which matters, because only one of them tells you whether a pathogen can grow.
Do you have a toolkit for this?
Yes — the Dairy & Chilled Toolkit has thirteen records covering the same ground. It is records rather than a programme, but it is a good place to start if you want to do the work yourself.