A laboratory to serve the consumer
Through its own analyses laboratory, Servair conducts daily sanitary checks on foodstuffs destined for clients. Each year, the Roissy laboratory analyses 40,000 samples from the Servair and gategroup production centers.
It’s a precious advantage, because an internal laboratory guarantees improved responsiveness and faster results. It also ensures reliability and compliance at maximized standards throughout the entire network. Its action also reaches beyond the catering of Servair and its subsidiaries by performing analyses for certain clients.
Apart from validating shelf lives, and studies on raw materials and cooked foods, Servair’s laboratory also examines samples derived from the hands of production agents, from cooking material and utensils, from worktops and even from water and air. Attached to both the Quality and the Sustainable Development Departments, the laboratory is COFRAC (COmité FRançais d’ACcréditation, scope available on the website www.cofrac.fr, Laboratory Accreditation No. 1-1713), certified, and is therefore audited every 15 months by COFRAC which attests to the laboratory’s technical and organizational skills. Twice a year, the skills of its staff, as well as all its equipment ,are also checked through the use of control samples within the framework of an inter-laboratory trial protocol.
It’s a precious advantage, because an internal laboratory guarantees improved
responsiveness and faster results.
The laboratory has many objectives:
– The qualification of menus: analyses carried out on new products allow the validation of new menu cycles offered by SERVAIR to its clients.
– Counseling, auditing and training: they bring a certain added value according to each need revealed by analyses (check lists, investigation, interpretation, and so on).
– A microbiological quality control of food: to monitor the microbiological compliance of food. In addition to official analytical methods usually based on classical microbiology, the laboratory is able to conduct type PCR biochemical studies.
These analyses constitute a true measuring tool within the scope of HACCP’s methodology, for they help determine the potential origins of any microbes present, as well as precautions required to prevent contamination.
Expertise and crisis management: The laboratory is close to operations and is therefore flexible in analyzing samples. It can look for pathogenic germs in short periods of time by means of molecular biology. It can also, through its network, call on subcontractors for any specific task. For example, horse DNA was tested for during the so-called “horse meat” or “horse-gate” crisis.