The phrase, “FDA inspection” often sends a shiver down the spines of food manufacturers. But, a routine visit from the agency doesn’t have to be a scary thing. Here, Miriam Maxwell, senior principal regulatory scientist, corporate scientific and regulatory affairs at Ocean Spray, reviews how her company prepares for and executes FSMA inspections, as well as explains what the FDA looks for when it arrives at your door.
The phrase, “FDA inspection” often sends a shiver down the spines of food manufacturers. But, a routine visit from the agency doesn’t have to be a scary thing. Here, Miriam Maxwell, senior principal regulatory scientist, corporate scientific and regulatory affairs at Ocean Spray, reviews how her company prepares for and executes FSMA inspections, as well as explains what the FDA looks for when it arrives at your door.
Prevention of food contamination is a much more practical approach than testing every product in the supply chain. But, that doesn’t mean contamination testing technologies will ever be obsolete. Here, Vincent Paez, director of the Global Food Safety Forum (GFSF), answers my questions about current and emerging methods and technological advancements helping to keep the global food supply safe. Paez will be speaking at the Global Food Safety Forum’s event: Food Safety Training Summit on Monday, August 28, 2017 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
What was most important to our readers in July? Take a look back at last month by reviewing the 10 most-popular articles that appeared on Food Online in July.
Earlier this year, Food Online Editorial Advisory Board (EAB) member Omar Oyarzabal, Ph.D., penned a column on Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) in the food industry, its benefits, and some of the challenges it’s presenting. In his column, Dr. Oyarzabal clearly offered his stance on WGS, backing it with both scientific and anecdotal evidence. Intrigued by Dr. Oyarzabal’s stance, I wondered what other food industry experts thought about WGS. I reached out to two members of Food Online’s EAB to learn more.
In this segment of Food For Thought: Establishing, Maintaining, And Improving Food Safety Culture, Lone Jespersen, former director of food safety & operations learning at Maple Leaf Foods; and Brian Bedard, executive director of GMA SEF discuss some of the common barriers manufacturers face in food safety culture and how to overcome them.
From time to time, we come across companies planning to incorporate a food microbiology lab for in-house testing. Many times, management foresees the benefit of “faster turn-around time,” thus allowing programs to be adjusted more rapidly. Industry has seen more and more “rapid tests” on the commercial market promoting closer scrutiny of laboratory testing programs. In most cases, companies have done an excellent job evaluating the basic finances of doing in-house testing versus outsourcing to third-party labs. But, sometimes companies don’t understand the complexity associated with starting an in-house microbiology testing laboratory. In many cases, they don’t want to call their facilities a “laboratory” and want a “place” to test only for indicator microorganisms. Yet, after a couple of years, they start testing for pathogens. Such a transition creates a completely different scenario. In this article, we summarize key questions companies should address to help determine if starting an in-house food microbiology laboratory is appropriate.
Supply Chain Management is a constant struggle for food and beverage companies. Consumers want more insights about where their food is coming from, and on top of meeting consumer demands, manufacturers have two additional concerns: first, turning around inventory quickly at competitive prices while maintaining stock and supplier relations. Then, manufacturers must keep a close eye on quality, ensuring all products in the supply chain meet industry and consumer specifications. Obviously, there’s a lot to track in the data-driven supply chain. That’s where Artificial Intelligence (AI) can provide F&B companies with new supply chain insights to stay ahead of the curve.
Preventing physical hazards in food continues to be challenging, and frequently, the reason for companies and/or regulatory agencies issuing recall notices. A brief review of the recalls viewable online at Recall.gov indicates that the number of recalls for physical hazards per month ranges from zero to eight involving USDA and FDA amenable products. This article will provide steps to help food companies keep physical contaminants out of food, as well detail the latest technologies helping to reduce physical contamination-related recalls.
For years, there has been a buzz about how genome sequencing is revolutionizing food safety. It is definitely an incredible tool giving an immediate understanding of the genetic composition of microbial pathogens, including bacteria and viruses. However, there are still gaps needing filled regarding how pathogens produce disease and survive in foods. Genome sequencing brings us more tools to further characterize pathogens, but do not expect any other parts of food safety to be forgotten soon because of WGS.
In this report, Mint Jutras references data collected from its 2016 Enterprise Solution Study, which investigated goals, challenges, status and performance of implementations of ERP.
Quality control is one of the most important stages of the production process. Implementing a quality control program with automated vision inspection helps ensure every product meets quality standards.
Balanced coil metal detectors have always been negatively influenced by conductive or dense products. This has forced users to accept detection thresholds that are unacceptable or switch to costly unreliable alternative technologies. That is to say, up to now. A breakthrough method used for the toughest metal detector applications is improving sensitivities as much as 300 percent.
This white paper presents some basic best practices for efficient processing in a Ribbon Blender. The ideas discussed here are recommendations based on practical and technical experience gained by Ross over several decades as a leading supplier of Ribbon Blenders to the process industries worldwide.
The global beverage manufacturing and packaging industry is one of the most efficient processes in the world. Because of the enormous scale of the current beverage industry, American, European and Asian beverage manufacturers are becoming increasingly better equipped at manufacturing and packaging beverages at high speeds.
TOMRA Sorting has a solution for sorting blackberries. TOMRA sorters detect mold, stems, snails, unripe blackberries and foreign material in whole and broken IQF (individually quick frozen) blackberries.
TOMRA Sorting has a solution for sorting olives. TOMRA sorting machines remove discoloration, stems, pits and all types of foreign material.
TOMRA Sorting has a solution for sorting fresh, frozen and dried strawberries. TOMRA’s sorters detect and reject stems, leaves and snails, unripe, molded, rotten and discolored strawberries as well as foreign materials.
TOMRA Sorting has a solution for sorting fresh and frozen redberries. TOMRA’s redberry sorters are able to detect and remove stems, leaves and snails. The redberry sorters can also remove unripe, rotten and discolored fresh and frozen redberries as well as foreign materials.
TOMRA Sorting has a solution for sorting pears. TOMRA sorting machines are able to sort pear halves, dices or cocktail pears by size and shape differences, peels, pits, discolorations, defects, blemishes and all types of foreign material.
TOMRA Sorting has a solution for field run, raw receiving, pre and post peeling, diced and frozen tomatoes.
TOMRA’s tomato sorting machines detect and remove off-color, rot, mold, yellow shoulder, sunburn, breakers, under and oversize removal and all types of foreign material such as animal matter, cotton stalks, metal, plastic, stones, glass, wood etc.
TOMRA Sorting has a solution for sorting cherries. TOMRA's cherry sorting equipment detects pits inside cherries, stems and rotten pieces or other discolorations in fresh, frozen, sweet, tart and brine cherries.
TOMRA Sorting has a solution for sorting pineapples. TOMRA’s pineapple sorters detect and remove brown discoloration and skin pieces on fresh and frozen pineapples.
TOMRA Sorting has a range of solutions for sorting apples. TOMRA’s apple sorting equipment detects cores, red and green skin, oxidized/discolored/bruised apples and pits in fresh peeled and unpeeled, frozen and dried apple dices and slices.
TOMRA Sorting has a solution for sorting dried figs. TOMRA’s fig sorters detect and remove discoloration, aflatoxin and foreign materials.
The spices, herbs, seeds, and other dehydrated vegetables used to flavor food are fermented, dried, and processed in order to develop their unique flavors and fragrances. Once the appropriate flavors are attained, the spices are shipped all around the world with many modes of transportation, such as open barges or refrigerated trucks. Unfortunately, many of the spices and herbs become contaminated with bacteria and molds over their long journey. This article presents two effective solutions for preventing as much contamination as possible before the spices and herbs reach the table; ethylene oxide (EO) fumigation and irradiation processing.
Contamination detection equipment is critical to ensure food safety. However, pumped poultry inspection has traditionally proved challenging for numerous reasons. This post shows how market-leading pipeline x-ray equipment can help to protect consumers and manufacturers’ brand reputations by overcoming four common poultry inspection challenges.
Integrated Management Systems help food organizations optimize performance throughout the entire company with the goal of achieving operational excellence by prioritizing food and workplace safety, quality, yield, and productivity — in that order. But as anyone in the food industry knows, facilities often become so focused on maximizing yield and productivity that safety and quality are put on the back burner. This is where performance culture enters the picture.
There are a number of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems on the market, which makes it hard to find the best solution for your needs. The key is to identify the features your food ERP system needs in order to address your most important requirements and challenges.
A Food Company’s guide to getting data, processes and procedures GFSI ready and what you might want to consider.
Welcome to Food Online, the premiere Internet resource, helping build a community to advance the production of safe and healthy food and beverages. We provide best practices and solutions in food safety, food processing, automation, packaging and the supply chain.
The site is designed for plant engineers, production managers, manufacturing engineers, processing technicians, operations supervisors, and business managers, it provides daily news updates, reports, and solutions on business and technology trends vital to the industry. We provide plant managers, quality control/quality assurance technologists, and research and development experts with up-to-date information and industry solutions in the areas of food safety and regulatory issues, metal contamination, x-ray inspection, check weighing, and bacterial detection.
Both process and production engineers and technicians, along with marketing and business managers will find, case studies, white papers, and other technical solutions and product information on mixers, blenders, filling equipment, homogenizers, conveyors, sorters, graders, flow meters, pumps, tanks, valves, freezers, chillers, heat exchangers, moisture controls, pH meters, and sensors.
Food Online also covers quality control and quality assurance systems, information management systems, process control systems and equipment, as well as clean-in-place systems, measurement systems, sanitation systems, end-of-line packaging, packaging equipment, primary packaging, secondary packaging, and contract packaging. Transportation and logistics professionals will find valuable information concerning the supply chain, cold chain, traceability, and, sustainability.
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