Smokehouse guidelines for mail order

[buzmike]

Hello all: my wife and I own a small general store and one aspect of the business is our home-smoked meats and cheese. We do a nice little business with this both in-store and mail order. After 14 years of doing this (and previous owner 11 years before that), we had our first USDA inspection and passed everything just fine (which I knew we would). They were here for the in-store retail portion of the business. They made an off-handed remark that they may come back in the future to check the mail order portion of the smoke business. I want to be prepared and could use your help. Here is some background: Our smokehouse looks almost exactly like the one I saw on the smokehouse.com webpage that I think Jeff built (except the smoke barrel is 25 feet away from the smokehouse). It is a cold smoker since the meat we get from our custom meat company is precooked and has a very long shelf life. When we send it out we vac-seal it with a cold gel pack, even though it has a long shelf life. Anything I should be prepared for so when they come back we pass with flying colors? Thanks so much.

 

[TulsaJeff]

Mike.. I have been looking for a specific article I saw on this a while back but have not located it yet.

I am hoping that one of the guys here will be able to give you some general guidelines as to what the inspectors would be looking at and what the general requirements are for a business such as yours.

I know several of the people here have had similar businesses in the past and should be able to help some.. so hang tight.

Good to have you on board by the way!

 

[buzmike]

Jeff: thanks so much for trying to help.