Dawn Lynch at House of Raeford Farms is not interested in bragging about her new position with the poultry company.

“It’s definitely something I have to get used to,” she said of her recent promotion to corporate quality assurance manager. “I had just mentioned to a coworker of mine that I’m not even comfortable at this point stating my title after my name. I just still want to say, ‘Hey, I’m quality assurance,’ and that’s it.”

However, the Rose Hill, NC-based poultry processor was proud to be promoting Lynch to the new job in June and wants her at the center of its food safety efforts.

Before the new job, Lynch only worked at the Wallace, NC, location for House of Raeford. She will still lead that effort for quality assurance but will travel to other ready-to-cook plants in the southeast about every six weeks.

Along with Wallace, Lynch will supervise the ready-to-cook operations in Rose Hill, NC, Greenville and West Columbia, SC, and another in Arcadia, La. All the plants, except for the one in Louisiana, are within a five-hour drive for Lynch.

The Wallace plant is about double the capacity of the other four locations that will fall under Lynch’s purview.

“I think the company was just wanting to centralize some of the food safety and quality information,” Lynch said in an interview.

While managing quality assurance, food safety and industry-standard HACCP programs, Lynch keeps employees and customers aware of what’s happening in these categories.

“I think we’re managing a lot of different things throughout the day, a lot of different expectations from the regulatory side and the customer side as well as our company,” Lynch said. “We have high expectations for quality. I try to manage that from all different angles and to ensure that we’re meeting all of that.”

Career evolution

Lynch started in the poultry industry by working in the accounting department at Wayne Farms, where she eventually gravitated toward the research side of poultry. After time in the lab, she moved over to quality assurance after realizing she liked the fast pace and change in her position daily. Lynch joined House of Raeford in 2000, holding various roles with quality assurance as she developed in her profession.

A valuable starting block for Lynch in the new quality assurance role was a recent investment by her company in a training program, which began in the summer of 2023.

“We want to make sure that our employees understand that we’re producing a food product and not just a gadget,” Lynch said. “I think it’s definitely important to drill down the training across the management team all the way down to our employees at each location.”

While leading food safety at the Wallace plant, Lynch delivers annual refresher training for employees in quality assurance to keep them aware of all the trends in the industry. She reviews food safety topics with employees and does the training monthly.

Lynch and her team use their HACCP program to conduct critical control point inspections. The program aims to meet, reduce and/or eliminate hazards at the facilities, including zero tolerance for fecal tests, temperature checks when the birds are exiting the chillers, and other points before shipping.

“We are doing inspections on the finished products to ensure that they meet our company specs as well as any customer specifications,” Lynch said.

The company stated it does micro-testing for the Food Safety and Inspection Service and the House of Raeford pathogen reduction standards.

Generally, those topics are touched on every year, and in 2023, Lynch and her team will look at food defense training which includes food fraud prevention.

House of Raeford also partners with local community colleges for more advanced training on food safety topics.

Source: House of Raeford Farms

Tracking poultry

Traceability remains a necessary component of any quality assurance process. Lynch noted that House of Raeford knows exactly where the poultry came from and even which house number from the grower’s farm.

As products move through secondary processing, chicken labeling is added as the product moves down the supply chain.

“We put a label on the product, and we scan each individual label so we can track it,” Lynch said. “If the customer were to send us a request for information, we could track it down to the very individual box of what we shipped to them.”

Throughout final checks of a finished product, Lynch said the quality assurance department inspects the labels to ensure that they meet the different criteria of the USDA and the company.

House of Raeford tracks the ingredients and packaging materials received for its internal inventory. Whether it is the Wallace plant or another facility, Lynch looks for helpful procedures to pass on to others.

“I want to identify best practices that we’re using throughout House of Raeford and implement those best practices throughout our company,” Lynch said. “Even if I’m going into locations outside House of Raeford, I want to see the best of what they’re doing and learn from that. If it’s something that we could benefit from, we’ll then implement that into our locations.”

To keep up with the food safety trends, Lynch uses various newsletters and updates from trade associations, including the FSIS, to keep up with what’s happening in food safety.

Even as she moves into the corporate role, Lynch will participate in the daily meetings, plant audits and all other correlating activities for quality assurance technicians and supervisors in Wallace.

Key Communication

During a typical production day, Lynch is in touch with many departments to keep quality assurance top of mind. On a given day, she might work with management, operations, safety, purchasing and human resources to keep products moving at a facility.

One of the first projects that Lynch has targeted is transitioning the quality assurance to a paperless program. At the Wallace location, she estimated the process is about 85% paperless for 2023.

“We’ve been able to transfer all of our data collection into a digital format and it’s readily available at our fingertips,” Lynch said. “We have information that we can track and trend and analyze to make decisions.”

Along with work at the plant, Lynch and House of Raeford reach out to communities to look for the next generation of agriculture professionals.

Lynch also assists with Duplin Agribusiness Academy which provides college and workforce readiness for people interested in entering the industry.

The growth of women’s leadership development in the industry remains something that Lynch wants to continue to promote going forward with her new position.

“I see a lot more women in leadership roles across the industry and becoming more comfortable in those leadership roles and stepping out and going into the community and working with the local schools and other organizations to promote agriculture,” Lynch said.