Just after Christmas, we had a surprise inspection of our meat plant. No big deal, except for one fact, our plant was closed. Yes, it was a coincidence, but not entirely. Our plant lead butcher is Muslim, I think I mentioned this before, and he brought two cousins and a friend to the business. All were trained as butchers, and all had extensive qualifications. Apparently, it is not uncommon for generations of butchers. Anyway, in early January there was a wedding in the family, and the entire team had been invited. We discussed with Jennifer and decided that it was more convenient to shut down the plant for two days. We don't operate near capacity anyway so as long as we had time to plan, and we did. It caused no concern or problem on the farm. Obviously, as the plant would be shut down we took the opportunity to do a deep clean and perform some necessary maintenance.
When the inspector was on site, the refrigeration company was inspecting the systems and calibrating the thermostat. Needless to say, he was not happy, but that's the consequence of a surprise visit. Because so many of our butchers are Muslims, (about 70%) they follow the Muslim holiday calendar. which means that on the high holidays, our plant is closed, guess what was the date of the second inspection....yep, again the plant was closed for the day. It was midweek. Now we did warn the previous inspector that our plant was closed during Muslim holidays, instead of Christian ones. I guess it didn't register.
Guess who showed up last Monday at 8 am. Yep the inspector, this time everyone was around, actually it was a busy day for both teams. We run a two-team 13-hour day schedule. The first time starts around 6 am and the second team arrives just before 11 am. We got top marks, which doesn't surprise me, our head butcher is driven and demanding with regards to meat handling hygiene.
Still who will believe that in the space of 60 days, we had 3 surprise inspections.
Note: As a company, we are indifferent to employees' holiday preferences, we provide a certain number of paid holidays per annum. A farm is different than other businesses, animals have to be fed every day, cows have to be milked, and someone has to be there when calves or kids are born. There is a real 24/7 responsibility towards our herd that dominates everything.
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