Food Safety
& Traceability
Our Organic Farms
Many of the mushroom substrate ingredients we use are actually other farmers’ waste bi-products.
Material suppliers go through a strict approval process not only by us, but also our organic certifier, guaranteeing Non-GMO ingredients.
Our strict traceability records track mushrooms that are sold to our customers all the way back to the house they were grown in, which tells us exactly what materials were inputs in growing that mushroom.
Natural gas operated steam boilers are used to heat the growing houses during pasteurization and sanitation stages. A chilled water cooling system is used to cool houses to maintain the desired temperatures for growing mushrooms.
Only organic-approved pest control methods and materials labeled for mushroom use are applied during growing operations. Detailed records are kept on each and every application.
All mushrooms are carefully harvested by hand to preserve quality and tracked by pallet to the packing and processing facilities.
Every growing house will grow 2-3 “breaks” (or cycles) of mushrooms in order to use all the growing materials to their fullest potential without wasting inputs.
All stumps, or stems, are removed from mushrooms during harvesting and are given time to break down before they too become a soil ammendment.
Once mushrooms are harvested, all growing material is removed from the growing house and spread on farmers’ fields for fertilization. Hay, straw, corn, etc. is harvested off the fields that are fertilized with our mushroom compost and used to create our growing substrate!
Traceability Links
Mother Earth Packing Process
1 Product is received into the building from the farms by pallet. A raw material lot code is immediately assigned by the computer traceability system to the pallet.
2 The raw lot is deducted by pound from inventory and then each individual case is labeled to be PTI Compliant. This creates our finished product inventory.
3 Each case is scanned out by the shipping department when orders are built for customers.
4 Each case is fully traceable back to the grower within about 5 minutes.
5 Finished product can only be made from the raw products that the system is set up to do. This prevents non-organic, raw materials from being sold as an organic product – guaranteed!
6 Delivery sales orders are also system generated that show lot codes for each item sold.
For further details, or more information, please contact us!