As a specialist food trading company, Lacto Japan places the utmost priority on ensuring food safety. We will continue to maintain a stable supply of safe and reliable ingredients.
We have set up the Quality Assessment Office as a department to integrate quality management across the entire Company. In addition to addressing laws and regulations and collecting information regarding quality, the Quality Assessment Office puts together and develops and shares within the Company cases of quality-related problems that have occurred in each division and department as well as reports at the time of audits of suppliers’ factories. The Quality Assessment Office is responsible for the functions of preventing quality problems and disseminating information, and undertakes these functions on a daily basis.
Moreover, the Dairy Ingredients and Cheese Business Division and the Meat and Ingredients Division are striving to ensure even greater safety by promoting quality management of ingredients and products in an integrated manner while sharing information with the Quality Assessment Office.
When importing products, we thoroughly package and seal them at the manufacturer and perform thorough management so that they are not opened between the time they are loaded in a marine container and then inspected in Japan. Consequently, we believe there is almost no risk of contamination during distribution.
On the other hand, for dairy products, there is a risk that larger than specified lumps may be mixed in during the drying process of powdered milk products, or that the contents may leak, solidify, or contain foreign matter if the heat sealing is not perfect when the product is sealed. Another potential problem is that some packing used on production lines could become mixed with products.
We are therefore striving to ensure proper management and operations by thoroughly identifying such assumed risks, disseminating information and awareness among all employees, reviewing manufacturing systems in terms of physical and non-physical aspects, and keeping manufacturing records and records of equipment inspection and parts replacement. Note that so far there have been no occurrence of any major cases of contamination or major incidents in terms of safety or hygiene.
For us, as a trading company specializing in food products, the selection of suppliers is the first step in ensuring safety, and we do not decide on suppliers based solely on price. In selecting suppliers, we consider not only quality and technical capabilities, but also "the establishment of sufficient safety management systems in each production process" as an essential condition. In addition, since it is also necessary to comprehensively take into account factors such as track record and financial stability, our employees personally visit our suppliers around the world to confirm safety with their own eyes.
