3-min read
There have been a rash of food safety recalls due to contamination recently from listeria in ice cream, to salmonella in Jif peanut butter, to who-knows-what in Daily Harvest’s French Lentil bowl.
From Food Engineering Magazine:
“There is increasing scrutiny being placed on product contamination issues. Public, media and regulatory attention has focused on the sanitary practices of production facilities, with almost no industry being exempt. The potential costs of recalls, fines and long-term brand damage is compelling producers to take additional steps to ensure consumer wellbeing.”
Food and beverage product contamination can happen in a couple of ways says the article. Check with your manufacturers. If you are a manufacturer, I wrote this previously:
Your motto should not be "safety third" like a college ski club.You’re not 19 and sending it down the mountain. You’re making food products for people to consume. But if you’re starting up a new line and thinking those first production runs will be sellable product then your mentality has gone the way of ski club. You’re thinking about sales first, shipments second, and safety third.
Consumers are demanding more information about where their food comes from and how it is produced.
The most common structural change food and beverage processors report in 2020 is in food safety training – and not just Covid-19 safety – but things like HACCP and FSMA are also getting increased attention.
If you’re new to making value-added products for retail, foodservice, or ingredients, food safety will take on a whole new meaning. GFSI certifiers BRC (more for retail products) or SQF (more for food service and ingredients) have overlap, but generally today SQF is the higher standard.
It comes down to traceability and more documentation than you might be used to. You’ll do yourself a huge favor by getting on board with this reality and planning accordingly.
Step 1
Plan to run product that you will have to throw away or send to a feed lot
Step 2
Document everything you do in these runs. Start calling them plant trials. These will be the line sheets you will need for your 3rd party audit.
Step 3
Assign each department (Production, Sanitation, Maintenance, QA) the responsibility of writing their own SOPs
Step 4
Get an accredited agency like FSNS to do an audit of your GMPs prior to starting your BRC or SQF paperwork.
A word about re-work: it might be tempting to save product from plant trials for use as rework later on. Rework should be carefully considered as something to be utilized in the short term and in single-digit % quantities. If the end user has a tight spec, on whatever the variable might be (shelf life, color, size) you risk being out of spec on the entire run, especially if they test on their end.
All my best,
Jennifer