Toronto, ON (PRWEB) February 03, 2012

Intelex announced today that American Fruits and Flavors (AFF) joined its growing roster of clients in the food and beverage industry. AFF is using Intelexs training management and document control applications to help maintain Safe Quality Food (SQF) certification, and to improve the integrity of its training and document management programs.

AFF, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, is a leading provider of flavors, concentrates, purees, and juice blends for food producers. The company has made maintaining SQF certification a corporate priority in the name of providing the safest, highest quality products and to further prepare for incoming requirements of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). This legislation, signed into law last year, will require almost all American food and beverage companies to adhere to strict food safety requirements.

The FSMA will require food and beverage companies like ours to take better control of their documentation, training and analysis capabilities in the name of providing the safest food for consumers, explains Stephanie Hickey, a document and training specialist at AFF. Leveraging Intelex, were able take programs weve already begun implementing and further ensure sustained SQF audit preparedness, which will also prepare us for FSMA regulations when they arrive.

Currently, SQF is a globally recognized, voluntary standard for food and beverage companies that is designed to minimize food recalls and improve food safety by ensuring farm to fork accountability. The standard builds on Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP), a centerpiece of FSMA regulations, which will be revealed as various rulemakings are finalized in the coming months and years.

Intelexs years of experience serving food and beverage companies across the U.S. and around the world have given the company, which develops environmental, health, safety and quality management software, a critical edge in helping clients comply with Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, as well as requirements related to FSMA, SQF and HACCP.

Hickey says AFF chose Intelex based on exceptional customer service, the security and ease-of-use of its software solutions, and Intelexs array of long-standing relationships with other clients in the food and beverage industry.

A key advantage of Intelex is we had the option of hosting our system on our own server, a critical feature since security of information is incredibly important to us, she notes. None of the other vendors we looked at were able to do that.

Although the Intelex system was implemented at AFF only recently, Hickey has been noticing significant improvements already.

Our system for document approvals is much faster, she says. Before, we would print out documents and circulate them among multiple approvers, which was time-consuming and also made it difficult to track where a document was located, whether it was reviewed and whether it was the most up-to-date version. Now we have complete visibility into the status of all documents at all times.

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