To Re

: :

Manager of Kadza Hypermarket Berhad Store Manager of Kadza Hypermarket Berhad ( Segamat Branch ) Complaint of Frozen lamb

From :

Lamb is a healthy alternative to beef and chicken because of its lower calorie, fat and cholesterol totals. That is because our store offer this frozen lamb to customer. Customers, who are looking for a leaner alternative to traditional meats, will choose lamb. Though perhaps not as popular as beef or even chicken, lamb sold in retail stores is still subject to Malaysia Department of Agriculture and Agro Based inspection. Lamb does not contain any growth hormones because the USDA has not approved their use. Also note, because of its lower fat content and the lack of marbling in its meat, lamb must be prepared over low heat to preserve tenderness and juiciness. This tips already labelling in all frozen lamb supplied by Boch Foods Sdn Bhd. Statistic Report from website of Malaysia Department of Agriculture and Agro Based showed that the statistics on 2008 show that consumption of mutton is growing each year. On 2008, 20.98 million tonnes are recorded, meanwhile for 2007, 20.00 million tonnes. It shows that there still have many demands for lamb in Malaysia and although this meat is not a main dishes to prepare for Malaysian. Consumer Price Index, CPI for Sub-Group of food and Non Alcoholic Beverages, Malaysia showed that meat is increased to 7.3 per cent, from January to September 2011 compared to the same period for 2010. This data was taken from Department of Statistics Malaysia. This is due to increases for Food at Home (+0.5 per cent) and Food Away from Home (+0.3 per cent). According statistic report from our Sales department of Kadza Hypermarket Berhad (Segamat Branch) showed that the demand for lamb is increased for 3 per cent, January to September 2011 compared to the same period for 2010. This demand is increased each year since Kadza Hypermarket opened the business for lamb frozen on 2000. The most popular beef cuts are round cuts, which are usually prepared in breaded veal or beef, and ground beef. For weekend barbecues, short ribs and flank steak are always on the grill. Higher income consumers will also enjoy loin, tail of rump and sirloin steak. Boch Foods Sdn Bhd is our primarily supplier for frozen lamb since 2000. This increment is due to there are many foreign students in this area make the demanding for lamb is always increasing. There have many restaurants offer lamb in their menu for customers too. Anyhow, we got many complaints along last week. Customers were complaint about the frozen lamb in our store which they claimed the lamb had a peculiar taste. They also

claimed that the meat shown red in colour once in frozen packaging but changed to greyish brown colour when thawed it. Those complaint was written by our loyal customer as their card store shown that they always get the lamb from our store at least one purchase of frozen lamb for a week. We check their history of purchased to make sure the complaints arent fraud. All the frozen lamb that they complaint is from second last delivered of this month from this supplier. The frozen lamb which is delivered for last week isnt have a complaint and still in good condition and can be sell as usual as confirmed by this supplier. I was checking the frozen lamb in the freezer for the second last delivered, and there have a meat that doesnt look pinkish colour and notice that grey, green or brown colouring on the meat. This colour showed that bacteria or yeast may have spoiled the meat. Besides that, it also may due to freezer burn, protein denaturation or mould. However, fading or darkening of the meat is normal and usually due simply to storage in the freezer. In addition, the fresher the meat is, the redder it usually is. White spots are usually due to freezer burn. Freezer burned meat is safe to eat, but it won't taste good and the consistency is odd. Many people trim freezer burned areas of meat off before cooking. I am noticed about the mould colonies on frozen lamb stored in the freezer with slime or a slimy feel of the meat. Some of the frozen lambs also have whiskers or lines inside the meat which also form with mould infestations of the meat. Finally, actual maggots or other insects in the meat are a great indication the meat is inedible. Bad meat is a breeding ground for bacteria such as Staphylococcus, Salmonella, Bacillus, Clostridium and Escherichia coli. The amount of bacteria in meat doubles every 20 minutes when left at temperatures from 40 degrees Fahrenheit to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, becoming a dangerous risk to our health. Cooking temperature and proper handling are key factors in the safety of eating meat. Microorganisms such as bacteria, yeasts and moulds can cause food spoilage and deterioration during food production. They could be lurking in the tubes that convey milk to cartons, lying in wait on the floor, or even floating in the air where sausages are being packaged. And they are poised to attack and contaminate our food at any time. The food production chain is growing more and more complex, which increases the risk of food going bad at some point during production. Even the best-quality food will not be safe to consume if it sits around too long. Foodproduct dating can help to decide if an item is still safe to eat. However, with a few exceptions, there are no federal regulations requiring manufacturers or vendors to put expiration dates on food products. Even when a product is dated, it isn't valid if the food is stored improperly or is damaged. If a food item smells bad or the package is damaged, it's

best to discard it rather than take a chance with your health but sometimes in certain condition , I will asked our workers to trim off this freezer burned areas, rewrapped it and sell with lower price after got advise from our Chief Food Officer. Boch Foods Sdn Bhd is our primarily supplier since 2000. For records, there were no complaints been made since they started supplied the frozen lamb to us. Unfortunately, there were ten complaints cases last week for the peculiar taste of frozen lamb made by unsatisfied customers. Supplier Boch Foods has recalled certain batches of lamb meat and offal due to the possible presence of the medicine residues. According to them, the sheep were sold for breeding and were not intended to enter the food chain immediately as they had been treated with a drug for sheep scab that had not yet had time to pass through their systems. It had taken potentially affected batches of lamb off its shelves and was asking customers who had already bought it to return the lamb to stores. Boch Foods has contacted us and told to remove the affected products from sale which is from second last delivered in this month. We already withdrawn several offal products from sale and displayed point-of-sale notices in our stores. The investigations are still continuing and full detail is not available due to limited traceability. From our investigation, I am seeing much factors contributed to this problem. One of it is lack of sensitiveness to the cleanliness. Handle the frozen lamb need more hygienic practise. As now, we are having flu influenza as global issue which need handle everything with high priority of hygienic. Apart from fighting the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, a key objective of environmental legislation is to improve the quality of our air, the pollution of which has repercussions in particular on peoples health and in the form of phenomena such as acidification on the environment. As per you awareness, there have a neighbourhood construction nearby our stores. With the dust and chemicals that there are using is maybe one of the contribution to this problem. With the bad environment, microbial are easy to spread and can make our frozen lamb contaminated too. It can be when unloading from trucks to our store. Segamat is having a serious flood on January 2011, it has been three years since the folks of Tenang and Labis have seen serious floods in their areas but the rising waters are back to wreak havoc in their lives once again. This month, the flood comes again for the second time. The main roads along the Labis and Segamat stretch are also flooded, making it difficult for vehicles to pass and causing traffic snarls. It makes the delayed of the arrival of the products to our store. Segamat is main road direct to our store and no alternatives road to arrive here. It might be one of the contributions to the problem. It takes more than 4 hours to

arrive at our store and there have not enough workmanship at our store for the time of this frozen lamb arrival, which is around 2 p.m. This is a peak hours in our store, therefore no one had handle this unloading frozen lamb from trucks and another three workers already having their lunch and needs to waiting until their break hours ended up. With the shortage of man power and unsuitable time for unloading the products, it still given some affected for this product. The right time to unloading is early in the morning and evening as the low temperature will slow down the spreading or growing of unwanted microbial which can contaminated to the product. From the conversation with the supplier this morning, they told that their frozen lamb is suspicion of dioxin contamination too as arising from a nearby waste incineration plant. A sales ban has been placed on the products showed levels of dioxin above health protection limits caused by pollution from the local waste-burning station. People have consumed some of the dioxin-contaminated meat but dioxin pollution is only dangerous over a long period of time. Preliminary studies do not indicate traceable toxicity in people but medical examinations will still be carried through to eliminate all doubt. Civic meetings will be held in areas close to waste burning stations to present the situation and the next steps to be taken. There are many ways that can be taken on our store too to combat this issue. It is to avoid any risky that may appeared due to contaminated products. Spectrometer is one of the appliances that are using to trace microbes and trace them back to the various steps in the production process. Scientists have long used Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy as a method of chemical analysis, and for the last two decades for identifying bacteria as well. Each microbe has its own unique spectral profile, which functions much like a fingerprint and was used for identification purposes. This appliance already has stored approximately 20,000 spectral profiles of different microbes. Therefore, it easy to compare its profile with those already entered in the database. The method can also detect all types of microorganisms in air, fluids and many other substances. This new appliances is highly priced due to new introductory in markets. Anyhow, this high technology appliance can give us more benefit to our store to avoid the spreading of these microbes to other food in our store. It will prevent us from other cost incurred with this contaminated foods. It is a very precise and high-capacity method, with the additional advantage that technicians dont need to be specialists in mycology in order to identify the microorganisms. Any food that comes from an animal can be full of bacteria. Possible bacteria include Salmonella, Escherichia coli O157:H7 (E-coli), Listeria monocytogenes, Staphylococcus

aureus and Campylobacter jejuni. These bacteria can't be seen or smelled, so it's important to properly store the meat to prevent these bacteria from spreading and making our customer sick. These bacteria aren't harmful to people, but they do cause the meat to deteriorate so that we can't use it. A different set of bacteria causes meat to spoil. Freezing meat can make it last longer, but that drip that you see when it thaws means that you're losing small amounts of nutrients like amino acids, water-soluble vitamins, salts, proteins and peptides. However, it isn't a big deal since the amount of nutrients lost is very small. You still keep most of the meat's nutrients and physical properties like taste, texture and smell. The optimal freezer temperature for storing meat is -10 degrees F, but you can get away with a constant temperature of slightly below zero degrees F. Make sure the meat is properly packaged and sealed to prevent air and moisture exchange, which shows up as severe meat dehydration or freezer burn. Beef, fish and lamb can be stored for up to 6 months in a freezer. I am suggested that, we should buy another new freezer to meet the amount of frozen lamb in our store. Although there will be some cost but with this new freezer, we can store variety of meat and seasoned sausage package based on their classifications. Some of those products have been stored with frozen lamb before this as we dont have enough space to store it as demanding for frozen lamb is increasing for last two months. Its due to intake from nearby Higher Educational Institution which there has many foreign students which are from Middle East. It makes the demands for lamb is highly increasing between these two months. Proper storage of meat includes keeping it refrigerated at 40 degrees Fahrenheit or below or, alternatively, frozen at 0 degrees Fahrenheit or below. Straying outside these temperature ranges may impact the meat's safety or quality. Under certain circumstances, such as the loss of power in our store for an extended period of time, refreezing meat that has thawed is considered. However, this course of action is appropriate only under very limited conditions. The reason why it's unsafe to refreeze meat left at room temperature has to do with the bacteria that cause food-borne illness. Meat can become contaminated with harmful bacteria during slaughter and processing, and these bacteria are already present in the meat. Refrigeration inhibits bacterial growth but does not kill the bacteria. Freezing causes the bacteria to become dormant but will not kill them either. The bacteria in a piece of frozen meat have stopped growing but once the meat is at room temperature they will re-awaken and resume their growth. In the event of a power outage, it's a good idea to situate the meat in the freezer so it won't drip on the other contents (assuming the freezer thaws out completely). Once it's repaired, we always recheck the condition of the meat. If the meat still has ice

crystals or remains partly frozen, we consume to refreeze it. If the meat is been at 40 degrees or above for two hours or more, we wont to consume refreezing. This power outage occurred twice in our store for this month. It may due to our building that used the electrical watt over limit. As per understanding, this building already old and need new wiring to hold the usage of electrical. Lighting make the situation worst as this place is at thunderstorm place. When the lighting, there will be a blackout and once the lighting continuous, we cant repaired directly and the best to do is waiting until the lighting or thunderstorm end. I am recommend to do upgrade of power supply for this store with new wiring and buy another new generator to hold the usage of electricity. One of the best ways to identify spoiled meat is to smell it. When a bacterium breaks down the meat, it changes the smell of it. If you notice an ammonia or sulphur smell, bacteria has multiplied and is eating the meat. A rancid smell or flavour may also be due to bacterial multiplication or may be due to improper wrapping of the meat. If you notice an onion flavour (or other odd flavours), this is probably due to storing the meat next to onions (or other foods). When in doubt, don't eat it. The best way to prevent spoiled meat is to store it properly. Make sure you're wrapping meat properly to prevent freezer burn. Most meats won't last longer than 6 months in a freezer and some, like poultry, can only last for 4 months. With the additional of products, I am suggesting that our store should have hired many workers compared to before to handle and check the product often to avoid a complaint from customers. We are shortage of workers as many of our former workers ended up their contract two weeks ago. Contaminated animal feed, ground water, and animals raised for consumption can have detrimental impacts on both supply and demand just as the use of poisonous, unwholesome, or adulterated food does. Although retailers and food service operators often associate food contamination with sourcing and production processes, increased scrutiny must also be placed on those involved in the transit of foodstuffs. Cost-saving strategies that use third-party warehousing or transportation providers must insure that new risks are not introduced. These operators must be held to the same stringent hygiene, temperature, container, conveyance, and storage control processes, procedures, and control records as in your internal operations. To ensure safety from production to consumption, we should to include a focus on upstream sourcing and on operational integrity across manufacturing, processing, and packaging operations. We can enhance and establish our own policies to make sure that raw material or any material such as this frozen lamb are handling in good practices. Materials in contact with food include objects such as containers and packaging,

but also all materials in contact with foodstuffs, such as paper and cardboard or those which could possibly transfer their constituents to food, for example inks and adhesives. Countries have experienced not only health and safety impacts for consumers because of food-safety incidents, but also significant trade disruptions. These include border closures, import bans, and the loss of hospitality and tourism ringgits due to outbreaks of avian influenza, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), and foot-and-mouth disease (FMD). These diseases have caused billions of dollars in losses globally in the past decade. Anyhow, I would recommend to reconsider this supplier again, Boch Foods Sdn Bhd for future. In previous years, Boch Foods Sdn Bhd not gave us a trouble or having complaints from customers. In fact, there have much compliance about their frozen lamb which are so tender and juiciness. With much compliance, we had maintained this primarily supplier for many years as the demand always high although lamb is not Malaysian main favourites. Boch Foods Sdn Bhd also a very responsible company as they already recall their product to investigate. This responsibility and fast action make us believe that this supplier always keep the quality of their product as their priority. I am confidences that this supplier will do research and find the main sources of their peculiar tastes frozen lamb and will solve this issue soonest. We will not having a bad reputation as customer already acknowledges that the product already had been recall and waiting for future actions. Realizing that there are many suppliers who are bidding the contract to place their frozen lamb in our store, but with the long cooperation and good reputations that has been made with this Boch Foods Sdn Bhd, we should give another chance around 3 months to them to prove that the product that they offered is still safe and in high quality before we decide to terminate their contract. It will help us to address every aspect of our business venture too. This depth of details is needed to getting our business up and running well. For the time being, we should give opportunity to another supplier to place their frozen lamb at our store to make our frozen lamb is from variety supplier and make a competence between these two suppliers. This competence is good for our business as both of them will try to maintain the quality of the product they had supplied respectively. We also dont have to face shortage of the frozen lamb because if one of the products is contaminated, there is another product that can meet the customer needs and fulfil the demands. No additional pricing will incurred due to unbalanced of demands and offerings. Anyhow, I would like to suggest that get suppliers of this lamb from different place of the farm to avoid risky of contaminated lamb in the same farm.

Malaysia is going through a contraction in economy since the first quarter of year 2010. This directly indicates that consumer's purchasing power has drop and consumers would not spend lavishly. However, signs of economy recovering are beginning to pick up as of the second quarter of year 2011 it GDP is 2.8 %. Fortunately, the food service industry is not affected considerably as there are still signs that the industry is growing at a positive rate with consumers want more of it. Therefore we should grab this opportunity to make sure the products always enough at our store, all our maintenance in good condition and no more problems appeared especially for issuance of quality of the product as we already engrave a good impression in this area since 2000. If today, the main sources of the complaint is more to supplier liability, but we still can be blamed as we failed to give a good and proper storage for their products. Therefore, I do hope that all recommendations made by me will look seriously as we should fix all the problems that may appeared at any time in our store too. Rohaya bt Daud (3632 words)

REFERENCE 1.