MARK Fletcher reckons that he will finish putting in place procedures that will enable him to meet new US rules for food exports there by August.

The managing director of Coffee Roasters of Jamaica also expects that it will help him to boost sales in North America.

Presently, his company which roasts and packages coffee — ground and whole beans — exports approximately 15 per cent of the 200,000 pounds it produces annually to the US.

New requirements being phased in under the Food Safety Modernisation Act (FSMA) by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), requires that all processed foods entering the country must be tested by an accredited laboratory.

That’s why he is already months into a programme to implement Hazard Analysis and Critical Control points, or HACCP, at his Kingston-based factory.

“It looks at the points where contamination can take place, and put in place procedures to prevent and control them,” Fletcher said.

Just getting onto the factory floor, which was recently sealed with a protective coating, now requires a series of check points — including a hand-washing station.

And while the roasting fills the air with the rich coffee aroma, the beans are being passed by magnets and over destoners to extract metallic and non-metallic objects from the product.

Even moving packaged material will require plastic pallets instead of wooden ones — to eliminate the possibility of splinters getting into the product.

From time to time, the FDA conducts audits of businesses that export to the US, and the FSMA also requires exporters to share their food safety plans with the FDA upon request; write and implement food safety protocols to mitigate potential hazards; and implement acceptable traceability and recall mechanisms.

HACCP is defined as a systematic preventative approach to food safety and allergenic, chemical and biological hazards in production processes that can cause the finished products to be unsafe, and designs measurements to reduce these risks to a safe level.