Food Safety

Serving You Confidence

Our 40+ years in the business comes with a lot of know-how. From farm to finished product, safety is always our top priority. We exceed all requirements in training, testing, sourcing, and sanitation, ensuring you quality food that you can serve with confidence.

COVID-19 Measures

Staying open to keep you fed is a privilege we don’t take lightly. In a time of unprecedented concern, we’re writing to let you know how Rastelli’s is approaching safety during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition to our already stringent safety protocols, we’ve implemented the following procedures:

Complete daily equipment and production room break-downs for extensive cleaning, scrubbing and sanitizing.
Employee temperature checks with medical-grade IR Thermometer upon entering the facility, administered by a trained professional.
All employees are issued and required to wear PPE, including Surgical-grade Masks, Disposable Nitrile Gloves, Face-Shields, Disposable Aprons with sleeves.
Ongoing, continuous Training and Education of ALL Staff regarding virus mitigation steps as well as constant hand-washing and sanitizing.
Implementation of Physical Separation Devices and signage to help enforce social distancing.
“No Visitor” and “No Travel” policies are being enforced.
Addition of professionals dedicated to monitoring social distancing.
Additional covered outdoor seating for breaks and lunches added.
EPA approved anti-viral mitigation applied daily to production and office areas.
Daily virus briefings from and communications between Federal, State, and Local Health Authorities. Regulatory updates via the USDA/FSIS, FDA, CDC and DHS are received and discussed each morning.

SQF Ceritification

Safety starts with our people. Approximately 40 members of our staff are HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) certified. To put that number in perspective, most facilities only have one or two certified staff members.

We require ongoing training up to SQF (Safe Quality Food) Level 3, the highest level of food safety certification available, for all our of full-time employees. Our Quality Assurance director, managers, supervisors, president, procurement team, maintenance team, and even our sales team take part in these trainings. We believe that having every single team member involved in these trainings is critical to helping us consistently improve our operations.

Rigorous Testing

Responsibility

Our daily testing protocol, performed by internal and external teams, ensures that we’re always exceeding the highest safety standards. Each morning, a USDA inspector performs “pre-op” testing and bacterial analysis before any operations can begin. After passing USDA standards, we then send our HACCP-certified internal quality assurance team to retest our facility. After receiving a second confirmation, we begin our day.

We know that ground beef safety is a particular concern for many customers, so we’ve developed an SQF testing protocol that far exceeds USDA requirements. Starting with meat from audited and approved farms, we test every delivery upon arrival. Meat intended for grinding must pass analysis for multiple strains of E. coli before it can even enter our facility. Once processing begins, we pull samples for on-site testing every 15 minutes; no product is released until the test results are confirmed. Finally, we send weekly samples to an outside lab for validation testing to make sure our results are accurate—so there’s never a question of safety.

Sanitizing Procedures

Once aged meat is ready to be butchered, it passes through an ozonated water bath that eliminates bacteria. We use the same ozonated water system to clean our machinery throughout the day, creating an ongoing sanitation process. Every night, a specialized sanitation firm cleans our facility from floor to ceiling; this includes disassembling machinery and cleaning the parts individually. Finally, our team, the sanitation firm, and USDA inspectors test the facility every day before operations begin.