“Life is great. Cheese makes it better.”

– Avery Aames, The Long Quiche Goodbye 

One of the activities of the Tokachi International Relations Center of Obihiro City is sponsoring study tours in various factories here in Tokachi. And this time, it was a trip at Meiji Tokachi Cheese Plaza located in Memuro, a town in the Tokachi subprefecture of Hokkaido. Meiji is the 4th largest confectionary producer in the world.

During the short introduction of the manager, he said that one of the goals of their company is to have a plant that is open and transparent to the society. This is why they create the Tokachi Cheese Plaza, a place where they can provide some knowledge on their factory. Well, that’s the exact reason why we are having this study tour.

The Tokachi Cheese Plaza offers factory tours and serves as a PR facility for cheese to allow visitors to see the cheese-making process. This just tells how confident they are with the quality control and quality assurance in their factory.

 The factory is producing 4 types of cheese: mozarella, cheddar, gouda and parmesan. I am not good in differentiating these types of cheese but i love cheese. Cheese is not really a part of my country’s culture but I was fond of eating a whole box of cheese when I was a kid. The plant is currently producing 20,000 tons of cheese per year. Aside from cheese, the Tokachi plant also produces cream and whey powder.

The factory tour allowed us to see the huge automated machines used in producing and packaging their products. It is so automated that the workers do not have a chance to have a direct contact with their products until it’s already in the boxes.

The factory really ensures the quality of their products by establishing an integrated quality system from reception of ingredients at the plant to shipment of the finished product. They have air-shower room to remove dusts and prevent foreign substances from entering the production rooms and an x-ray inspection of the packaged products to ensure thorough quality control. I remembered when I was taking my MPH degree, one of my subject is Food Safety and this is where I learned the HACCP standards. This factory is really excellent in ensuring food safety.

After the tour, they gave us a chance to taste their cheese products. While eating, I remembered a parody of The Eurythmics’ song that can be a good jingle for the Meiji cheese products: “Sweet dreams are made of cheese”.

It was fun having these study tours. I hope next time it will be in a chocolate factory ala Willy Wonka.