From the farm to your table
Maple Lodge Farms Food Safety - On The Farm
Maple Lodge Farms is a unique family business – we operate a fully integrated enterprise which includes hatcheries, feed mills, processing facilities, as well as a modern laboratory to ensure our products’ quality and safety. This integration 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.
