From the farm to your table
Maple Lodge Farms Food Safety - On The Farm
Maple Lodge Farms is a unique family business - we operate hatcheries, feed mills and processing facilities, as well as a modern laboratory to ensure our products' quality and safety. This combination of operations allows us to closely monitor and control the quality and safety of our products through the food chain, from the hatching egg all the way through to becoming the food that you serve on your family's table.
Maple Lodge Farms Food Safety Assurance
Maple Lodge Farms is devoted to providing you with safe, wholesome, premium quality products. Our food processing operations are technologically-advanced facilities where stringent sanitation procedures and comprehensive food quality control & safety management systems are rigorously practiced.
These food safety programs guarantee that all our chicken products have been produced in accordance with the strictest government and industry guidelines and regulations. Our food safety protocols and standards are amongst the highest in the industry and go far beyond regulatory requirements. To ensure that these standards are maintained and enforced, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency employs full-time Inspectors and Veterinarians at our facilities.
Maple Lodge Farms has been HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) certified since 1998. This certification is recognized world wide and is considered synonymous with the highest standards in Food Safety. By strictly utilizing the HACCP safety system and implementing good manufacturing practices, Maple Lodge Farms is able to provide you with the assurance that our products are of high quality, safe and nutritious.
Maple Lodge Farms Chicken Lifecycle
It all starts with the egg...
Maple Lodge Farms Hatchery Division purchases fertile eggs from about 40 independent producers, all family owned and located in Ontario, Canada.
For chickens, hatching occurs after a total of 21 days of incubation. Newly hatched chicks are transported from the hatchery to individual family-owned farms for growing. Sensitive to their environment, these chickens are not kept in cages, but roam freely on floors covered with soft, dry bedding. They're also given clean water and feed via feed systems and water lines that are checked daily to ensure unrestricted access. Our chickens are kept in climate-controlled barns to protect against the heat in summer, the cold in winter, as well as predators and disease. Heating, ventilation, humidity and other environmental levels are also checked and maintained consistently to ensure that the chickens are living comfortably and stress-free.
During the 5-8 weeks that it takes to raise a flock, our farmers give constant care and attention to the chicken's health and feeding. It's important to note that Ontario farmers have one of the highest cleanliness standards in the world. Our chicken producers follow a meticulous on-farm food safety program called Safe, Safer, Safest, that involves a strict food safety protocol, audited on-farm practices, and recognition by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. You can be secure in the fact that the chicken farmers who supply us exercise world-leading standards for bio-security and overall on-farm food safety. This ensures that our producers grow nothing but food safe, healthy and high-quality chickens.
What Chickens Eat
The main ingredient of all chicken feed is grains and grain by-products, protein-producing seeds, and meal made from seeds such as canola or soybean. In this sense all chickens are "Grain Fed". Vitamins, minerals and other protein sources are added to improve the nutritional content of the feed as well as to prevent nutritional deficiencies. It's important to note that there are no hormones in chicken feed. In Canada, the use of hormones and steroids in chicken feed has been banned since the 1960s.
Humane Handling
Maple Lodge Farms fully subscribes to respectful, humane treatment of Chickens. Maple Lodge Farms strictly adheres to the Codes of Practice for the Care and Handling of Poultry, a series of strict industry guidelines developed by a review committee made up of representatives from farm groups, animal welfare groups, veterinarians, animal scientists, federal and provincial governments, related agricultural sectors and interested individuals.
We work in conjunction with a number of provincial and federal organizations, including the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), Chicken Farmers of Canada (CFC) and the Canadian Agri-Food Research Council (CARC) to ensure that Maple Lodge Farms adheres to stringent regulations governing the care and handling of chickens in all phases of their lifecycles.
The welfare of the chickens we process is paramount for us. Safer transportation of poultry is an industry-wide issue. As the largest processor in Canada, we recognize the critical need to identify improved transportation solutions; a goal we know is shared by all in the industry. Maple Lodge Farms' has continued to focus on the issue and has financed transportation studies and participated in industry committees focused on improving the conditions for chickens during transportation. Working with industry experts and in cooperation with the CFIA, Maple Lodge Farms has invested a great deal of time in the research and development of a new transportation and loading system in order to improve the conditions under which the chickens are handled during the moving process. This project involved the complete retrofitting of the area of our facility where the chickens are received, the investment in new trailers, as well as the design and manufacture of new and innovative transportation "dollies".
In 2012, we will be leading the industry by switching to this state-of the-art modular transportation system for hens that will greatly improve the handling and loading process in preparation for transportation. Basically the modules (dollies) are like a chest of drawers on wheels that are rolled into the barns. The drawers are opened, the birds are placed in the drawers and then the drawers are closed and the dolly rolled into the trailer. The drawers have been specifically designed to optimize air-flow and the comfort of the chickens. The implementation of the system also means that the birds are only ever handled once, when they are loaded, greatly reducing their stress. They also will have less exposure to the elements as they will be put in the drawers inside the barn.
Maple Lodge Farms has and will continue to invest in verified improvements to equipment and processes in order to improve animal welfare during all phases of production, including transportation, and fulfill our commitment to the respectful and humane treatment of chickens.
