Quality Control

Tracking & Control from Sea to Customer

Baffin Fisheries Quality Statement

At Baffin Fisheries superior quality is integral to everything we do.  We operate under best-practice management and oversight systems to ensure all products are consistently harvested, processed and packaged to the highest quality standards, and that our products are tracked from sea to customer.

Quality Management Plan

Our processing-at-sea vessels, Arluk II- Reg # 0066, Inuksuk I- reg # 0049 and Sivulliq- Reg # 6002, harvest from the pristine cold waters of Arctic Canada’s North West Atlantic ocean. Each vessel is under its own dedicated Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP), Quality Management Plan (QMP), as governed by the laws of Canada; & Safe food for Canadians Act.

Regulatory compliance of the QMP is maintained through oversight by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), a Canadian national inspection and enforcement body.
Equally important to Canadian food production standards are those of Baffin Fisheries’ seafood buyers around the world and the requirements of importing jurisdictions; China, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Hong Kong, European Union, United Kingdom, and USA.
All regulatory standards are met and exceeded by our own in-house, stringent quality standards. This starts from the moment of capture, to processing on vessel within minutes, freezing at sea, cold storage and worldwide distribution.

Formal Documentation and Supervision

Each vessel factory operation is headed by an industry proven Factory Boss who reports to seasoned Captain and certified shore based Fleet QA Manager. Attention is paid to meeting customer requirements every step of the way from sea to customer, ensuring superbly fresh seafood products. Customer technical requirements are adhered to by ensuring accurate size grading, proper packing arrangement, sound packaging, correct labelling and adequate net weight, in both frozen and defrosted states.

Factory bosses carry out formal documented quality checks on incoming processing materials, raw product, on line production and final finished product. Crew are experienced, and trained in identifying, and addressing non compliant product that does not meet the requirements of the customer, importing country, CFIA or vessel HACCP plan.

Personal and factory facility hygiene is maintained by the most rigorous standards. The hygiene program is maintained through trained crew, superior cleaners and sanitizers agents, adequate proven and followed procedures, and results are backed up by daily inspections, completion logs & supervisory follow up.

Inspections

All landed cargos are independently inspected by industry recognized third-party inspectors upon discharge. The following conditions are documented & photographed for buyer review.

• Inspections detail
• core temperatures
• packaging/carton condition & labelling
• packing arrangement
• freshness &  physical characteristics
• cutting technique
• color & texture
• size grading
• individual weight, net frozen weight, defrosted net weight.

Laboratory testing is also used for microbiological and chemical analysis. Only certified cold storages are contracted to store Baffin Fisheries seafood products, where reputation for good handling & operating facilities are a must.

Traceability from sea to customer is maintained through Fisheries & Oceans Canada fishing and production logs, daily production QMP records, c/w date codes and lot number. From offload to worldwide distribution, the following documents follow the cargo to end users:

• Health certificate
• Origin & hygiene certificate
• Offload manifest
• Cold storage records (in & out)
• Trucking manifest
• Ocean going freight manifest
• Sales invoices

Product recall procedure is also part of the HACCP plan.