Editor’s Note: Some of the information below was included in a recent webinar that is now available on-demand. Watch “Maintaining brand values when things go wrong” anytime.
In previous articles, we have discussed how the food production process has multiple steps – including incoming raw materials, processing, packaging, storage, and transportation — all of which can introduce risk of contamination or quality issues. Product inspection techniques should be incorporated into a wider food safety plan that follows the principles of hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP). Such plans will help identify hazards and then build preventive controls to mitigate the risk from these hazards. Product inspection tools – like metal detection and X-ray inspection – are examples of such controls.
Here is a simple outline of a food safety plan based on the principles of HACCP:
The controls themselves should have defined parameters in which they operate, these should be documented and monitored, and when a problem is detected there should be defined procedures for how to respond.
Using industrial metal detection as an example, the defined corrective action could be to automatically reject any product contaminated with metal. However, in the spirit of continuous improvement, and to minimize future risk, there should be investigation as to the cause of the contamination and verification of the safety plan to ensure it is providing the optimal level of protection.
For example, in the metal detection instance, wet and conductive products can produce a response in the system that can be mistaken for, or mask, a contaminant response – this is known as product effect. For frozen products, the level of freeze is important; partially frozen product will respond differently to fully frozen product when passing through a metal detector and, unless taken into account, this can cause false rejects as production conditions vary throughout the day.
Operators must be aware of the changes to the product conditions, and a high-performance metal detection system will have the ability to automatically adjust to such changes in real time. Metal detectors must run in different frequency ranges to optimize the detection of different metal types. When the products being inspected have a large product effect it can be hard to find a single frequency to provide reliable detection of all contaminant types. Implementing multiscan technologies in such cases can significantly improve probability of contaminant detection. Even certain electromagnetic noise can interfere with the metal detector if it overlaps the detection frequency being used. This should be addressed, and again, multi frequency systems will offer better performance. You may even find that a food X-ray inspection system may be a better fit for your application.
Periodic verification of the system should be done to ensure it is designed and operating in such a way as to allow continuous safe production. (View our infographic: 5 Tips to Ensure Consistent Detection from Your X-ray Equipment that outlines five simple principles of test, protect, adjust, educate and maintain to get the most value out of your X-ray inspection systems and help ensure the highest level of food safety and the lowest downtime, false rejects, scrap and rework cost.)
A “just-in-case” process should also be included in the safety plan. Despite robust safety systems, high performance tools, and a real drive for food manufacturers to operate safely, sometimes foreign object escapes do happen. Product recall reports published by government agencies at the country level show many recalls each year due to foreign object contaminants being found in foods.
Worst case is that a batch of product will have to be scrapped — a costly process — but manufacturers do have opportunities to take corrective actions to mitigate he risks whilst the product is still in their control through additional, out of production inspection services.
As you can see, you need to plan for many “what-ifs” when you are developing your food safety plan.
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Post Author: Marlene Gasdia-Cochrane.
