Petra Sterwerf and Holly Mockus

Going Lean To Support Food Safety

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Petra Sterwerf and Holly Mockus

Lean manufacturing is synonymous with efficiency, but many people mistake it for being only about reductions in workforce, inventory or waste. Lean itself is a growth strategy, and like any strategy, it requires an investment—not a reduction—of time and resources to succeed. To understand how Lean Manufacturing can help food and beverage companies save money and improve efficiencies and food safety, we asked two industry professionals to share their insights.

Petra Sterwerf is an operations executive with experience in lean manufacturing and a background in plant management. She currently serves as director of commissary operations with Skyline Chili in Cincinnati. Holly Mockus is the director of content and industry strategy at Intertek Alchemy where she leads employee training for manufacturing clients around the world.

 How can Lean processes enhance food manufacturing facilities?

Petra: Lean’s meticulous focus on eliminating waste obviously makes it invaluable to the complex, ingredient-focused processes that dominate food manufacturing. However, Lean is ultimately a culture built through collaborative problem solving, which can happen every day throughout the organization.

Collaborative problem solving not only positively impacts the operations group, but it can also be taken across different departments and different processes within a food manufacturing facility. This focus on eliminating waste through problem solving is more important than ever in today’s economic environment where ingredients are more expensive and harder to come by.

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What’s happening in the industry to make Lean more important to companies? 

Petra: In the era of the great resignation, many food companies have lost a lot of institutional knowledge. So, you often have a whole new workforce to ramp up on important processes. Cross-functional, collaborative problem solving allows food manufacturers to bring together experienced people with employees who might be new to the industry. Combined, they can bring all kinds of new ideas to the table.

The process challenges experienced workers to consider new methods and techniques. It also helps less experienced workers understand many of the tried-and-true industry processes that make things operate efficiently.

What is the implementation cost vs. reward for setting up a Lean manufacturing program?

Petra: It’s hard to put a specific number on it, but I’ve seen an investment of $1 million result in over $10 million in returns. Beginning a Lean journey can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. At some companies, a Lean rollout may include large consulting groups and corporate teams. But I’ve been a part of implementations with just a couple of people in a small department.

Holly: Before you see financial ROI, you’ll see improvements in KPIs like safety recordable rates, environmental positive rates or first-pass quality rates. Production-wise, it could be your line efficiencies, your product yields or order fill rates. In terms of food quality and safety, you’re going to see fewer holds, customer complaints and near-miss incidents because your processes are more consistent.

Some people hear the word “Lean” and immediately expect workforce reductions. Can you implement Lean without having layoffs? 

Petra: I’ve been involved in projects for sizable facilities with over 600 people, and we did not lose one person in the name of a Lean manufacturing change. As part of the process, you will identify value-added tasks that you need and the resources to make them happen. And then you reallocate people accordingly. Also, manufacturing facilities often experience turnover, which adjusts the workforce level down to where it needs to be.

Holly: Lean cost savings can also be invested back into your employees through training, internal celebrations, facility improvements or other programs that can provide substantial worker and business benefits.

Where can you see the fastest results or ROI?

Petra: The quickest results tend to materialize in yields and formulations. In the protein business, for example, where meat has become more expensive, you have to decide where problem-solving Kaizen events are necessary, or where you want to implement standardized work. The meat cost or meat waste is always a good place to start.

Holly: I’ve seen many formula audits that reveal significant inconsistencies in processes such as things being weighed differently, or recipes and formulas that aren’t followed. These mistakes can produce inconsistent products and also result in regulatory issues that could affect public health. Streamlining these processes through Lean practices can deliver results in a short period of time.

What are some of the best ways to integrate HR and senior leadership into the Lean process? 

Petra: It is important to get HR involved from the very beginning by explaining what you’re trying to do with collaborative problem solving and putting Lean tools into place. As you start planning problem-solving events, keep HR in the loop on scheduling, processes and reporting. This is typically done every time you do a continuous improvement workshop. You’ll pull in senior leadership and HR to report what you learned from the event.

Holly: Sometimes it can help to include HR representatives in your Lean teams to represent the people factor. That way, if employees are concerned about any new process, HR can talk to it and provide the reassurances that are needed.

How do you educate and get the employees to embrace Lean? 

Petra: You have to be careful when you start a Lean initiative not to oversell it in the beginning. If you stop everything in the plant for an all-hands meeting to describe the project, you can cause some employee anxiety. And then people are expecting big changes to happen quickly. Lean can be a slow evolution, especially if you start with constrained resources. I recommend starting with a small group of people and talk to them, while letting all employees know that you’re starting small on this new project.

Holly: I would say you have to empower people and engage them by providing knowledge. They need to understand what Lean is, the benefits, their role and how they can contribute. It’s all about making sure everyone fully participates regardless of their level. And employees need to feel like they are being listened to and that their ideas have a chance of moving forward in the process.

How is creating a “culture of failure” essential to the ultimate success of a Lean program?

Petra: It’s basically the scientific method of thinking. You have to try different approaches, knowing that things don’t always work. Sometimes you have to take a few steps back, learn from mistakes, and move on. The worst mindset you can have is a fear of failure. That being said, you also don’t want to just try a whole lot of poorly thought out ideas and waste a lot of product or money.

How do you measure success from your initial steps, and how do you continue using Lean?

Petra: I would recommend that people implementing Lean programs document their journeys. At the beginning of the project, go around and take pictures of the current state of the business. When you start making changes, you often forget what it looked like before. And then you realize that despite making significant changes, you have no documentation to show that journey. Continuous improvement reports are a great way to capture pictures and create a folder of all the changes that you make.

 

PFAS

Phasing Out PFAS

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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PFAS

Efforts to regulate and remediate per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are picking up a steam. Earlier this month, researchers from Northwestern University published a study verifying a low-cost process that breaks the chemical bonds of two major classes of PFAS compounds—perfluoroalkyl carboxylic acids (PFCAs) and perfluoroalkyl ether carboxylic acids (PFECAs)—leaving behind only benign end products.

Last week, the EPA proposed designating perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), two of the most widely used PFAS, as hazardous substances. If finalized, the rule will trigger industry reporting of PFOA and PFOS releases and allow the agency to require cleanups and recover cleanup costs.

For the food and beverage industry, most current regulations involve food contact packaging, with states outpacing the FDA in implementing thresholds and working toward outright bans.

“Maine has a declaration requirement for PFAS in food packaging, and eight states are in motion to completely ban PFAS in food packaging products,” says Sally Powell Price, regulatory expert for food and beverage safety, MilliporeSigma.

California, Connecticut, Maine, Minnesota, New York, Vermont and Washington are among the states that have already passed legislation limiting the use of PFAS in food packaging. Outside the U.S., the Eurpean Commissions’ Restrictions Roadmap outlines a plan to outlaw the use of PFAS in packaging by 2030.

The good news for the food and beverage industry is that non-PFAS packaging alternatives are affordable. “The alternatives are fairly priced, so if manufacturers are converting from PFAS to non-PFAS materials, it may require changing some processes, but the price will not change very much,” says Yanqi Qu, food & beverage safety and quality technology specialist, MilliporeSigma.

The area that poses a greater challenge and requires more significant investment from the public and potentially industry groups lies in the testing of actual food commodities. This is also an area of increased regulatory scrutiny.

Regulating and Detecting PFAS in Food

In July, the FDA released the results of its Total Diet Study, which included outcomes of its retail seafood products PFAS testing. “This testing actually catalyzed a recall of clam products from China,” says Price. “The FDA tested foods imported from all regions for the study, so this is something that the FDA is monitoring. I can see this recent recall driving them to do more testing at the border for products coming in to the U.S., especially seafood.”

The state of Maine has dairy testing mandates already in place. “PFAS are bio-accumulators, so it’s not just fish. Cattle and other livestock could also be an issue,” says Price. “The testing program in Maine is a regulatory model that I would use to extrapolate and look at where our future could lie.”

One of the key challenges in detecting PFAS levels in food commodities lies in the variety of matrices to be tested and the huge numbers of PFAS currently in the environment. In December 2021, the FDA published its methodology for PFAS analysis in food and beverage, which focused on fruits, vegetables and beverage samples.

“They are using an extraction method. They used a solvent to extract materials from the surface of the food and beverage samples, and then analyzed them using a liquid chromatoghraphy and mass spectrometry (LC-MS) system,” says Qu. “This method was just posted last year, and the public is not satisfied with it. There are more than 600 different types of PFAS compounds, and for this method they only focused on 16 of them. The FDA is saying, we need more time to test for all 600.”

LC-MS used to test for PFAS in food and beverages is very similar to the PFAS testing in the environment. However, testing food products is more complex than testing water or soil. “Different foods have different interferences and complications, and it is extremely difficult to account for all of the potential interferences and or complications that might arise as you move from one matrix to another,” says Taylor Reynolds, marketing manager for environmental testing and industrial chemical manufacturing, MilliporeSigma. “The science is struggling to keep up. You get into issues where you might have overlapping peaks on your chromatogram, which makes it hard to distinguish the readings. Calibration standards are not all readily available. So, even if a lab wanted to test for 600 compounds, I’m not sure they could easily get their hands on 600 compounds as a reference standard to do their calibration groups.”

What Food Manufacturers Can Do

Price encourages food manufacturers to keep an eye on their state legislatures for proposed and upcoming regulations and be aware of known concerns specific to their areas. “The FDA looks to best fit for purpose,” she says. “So if there is a known concern, for example local data shows that you have PFAS infiltration in the ground water near your livestock or your crops, having a testing plan in place or a mitigation strategy is a good idea, where possible.”

Local FDA and EPA departments can often provide mitigation support as well as guidance to ensure you are aligned with local regulations.

In the coming years, we are likely to see not only more stringent regulations, but also a better understanding of the most hazardous PFAS compounds to help target mitigation and replacement strategies. This data combined with continued efforts to neutralize PFAS, as seen in the Northwestern study, could signal a promising future.

“Our work addressed one of the largest classes of PFAS, including many we are most concerned about,” said William Dichtel, Robert L. Letsinger Professor of Chemistry in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, and lead author of the Northwesten study. “There are other classes that don’t have the same Achilles’ heel, but each one will have its own weakness. If we can identify it, then we know how to activate it to destroy it.”

“PFAS compounds have been so incredibly useful, yet weaning ourselves off of them is not going to be terribly difficult,” says Reynolds. “As long as organizations keep their heads up and are paying at least a marginal amount of attention, it shouldn’t be a terribly difficult to transition away from them, particularly on the packaging side of things. I personally am optimistic about the ultimate resolution of this issue, because people are taking it seriously and the science is showing that we can find solutions.”

 

Image: PFAS Molecule, courtesy of NIST

Thermo Fisher

Using Isotope Fingerprints To Determine Fish Oil Authenticity

By Dr. David Psomiadis, Mario Tuthorn
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Thermo Fisher

The demand for fish oil is increasing. It is packed full of heart-friendly omega-3 fatty acids, including the functionally important docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). Today, consumers are ever more aware of the health benefits of incorporating fish oil into their diets, such as lowering blood pressure and helping prevent heart disease. It is therefore no surprise that many companies are increasing their investments in providing high-quality fish oil supplements, such as those with value claims including single species, designated geographical origin, sustainability practices and traceability. And it’s a lucrative business: the industry was worth USD 11.95 Billion in 2021 and is expected to reach a value of USD 17.64 Billion by 2028—a CAGR of around 6.7%.

As the industry continues to grow, so does the risk of economic fraud. Fish oil itself varies depending on its source: fish from different regions—even within the same species—have different oil compositions, and, understandably, different price points depending on the quality. Individuals and illicit organizations are exploiting the growing demand by circulating adulterated, mislabeled products with sub-standard fish oil and/or misrepresented product origin for financial gain. More than ever, robust legislation is required, and there is a need for increasingly accurate and sensitive analytical techniques to verify the origin, authenticity and label claims of supplements, foods and beverages containing fish oils.

Traditional food integrity techniques can’t accurately distinguish the origin of fish oils from the same species. New approaches are needed to provide greater analytical depth and accuracy, and to ensure that consumers can trust brands, manufacturers are protected and governments can control the use of fish oil. Here we explore how gas chromatography isotope ratio mass spectrometry coupled with a mass spectrometer (GC-MS-IRMS) can overcome these challenges and allow analysts to confidently determine fish oil origin from a given species.

Fish Oils: A Tricky Catch for Authenticity Testing Laboratories

The existing approaches to determine fish oil authenticity, including gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) fatty acid profiling and untargeted fingerprint determination by spectroscopic techniques such as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and near-infrared (NIR), are based on the compositional characteristics of the oils. While these compositions are important to understand, they do not reflect significant regional and geographic parameters. Yet gaining clarity on the geographical origin of fish oils from the same species is vital because the source of the fish oil can have significant financial implications. In particular, label claims that fish oils are derived from a certain geographical region can add value to the product. Confirming the fish oil origin also verifies traceability of the product and contributes to other important label claims including sustainability, health and safety. Therefore, knowing the origin of the fish oil and its authenticity helps to identify fraudulent practices that are used to boost product value.

Isotope Fingerprints Identify Regions and Processes

So, how can we better characterize fish oil? Compound-specific stable isotope analysis (CSIA) is an ideal solution. Fatty acids consist almost entirely of carbon and hydrogen. In fish, the natural variation of the isotopic ratios of these elements is influenced by the feed, the environment and the local habitat of a given population. CSIA can enhance fish oil testing by determining the stable isotopic values of individual fatty acids. Since isotopes vary with differing dietary sources, geographical regions of origin can be determined, even within the same species.

Recent advances in GC-IRMS allow the technique to provide the separation accuracy and detection resolution required to distinguish between different carbon and hydrogen isotopes in compositionally equivalent fatty acids, by CSIA. GC-IRMS works by separating compounds using gas chromatography, then analyzing carbon and nitrogen isotope fingerprints by combustion, and oxygen and hydrogen isotope fingerprints through pyrolysis. This approach enables the acquisition of isotopic information for each individual compound in the sample.

To further improve the capability of GC-IRMS, the set-up can be coupled to a single quadrupole mass spectrometer—GC-MS-IRMS—to allow structural determination and identification of compounds. With the hybrid system, the flow from the GC column is separated into two parts: the majority continuing for IRMS isotope analysis, with a minor portion for MS compound identification. The innovative design does not impact IRMS sensitivity, thereby gaining structural information without compromise. These system attributes mean that GC-MS-IRMS can determine the structure and isotope ratio of each fish oil compound. Using this method, analysts can generate accurate (close to the absolute value), repeatable and reproducible results.

The power of GC-IRMS is well-established in the industry. It has been embraced as a method to be standardized in food authenticity testing by several international bodies, including the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) and the German Chemical Society (GDCh), and is only made more powerful when coupled to MS. However, standardization requires successful method validation, demanding its specific investigation for fish oil characterization.

Separating Salmon and Comparing Cod

Fish oil labeling is centered around differentiating species and their geographical origins to support label claims. In a recent experiment, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Imprint Analytics worked together with Orivo to compare 30 salmon oils and 43 cod liver oils from the same species in different areas. These experiments were performed to demonstrate that isotopes can be used to identify the geographic origin of the samples, and to validate the method.

Samples were prepared by a derivatization procedure using CH3COCl in MeOH to obtain Fatty Acid Methyl Esters (FAMEs). Both carbon and hydrogen isotopes were measured for the samples (Table 1), and statistical analysis of the isotope data allowed the selection of certain parameters for the statistical model (Table 2). These then contributed to the discrimination of the given clusters for each model.

A number of principal functions (Fx) are generated in the analysis, integrating information from analytical parameters. Using different Fxs allows bivariate or multivariate illustrations, where F1 and F2 represent the largest amount of information available for the samples.

Table 1: List of the fatty acids (as FAMEs) screened and analyzed by GC-MS-IRMS.

Table 2: List of the fatty acids (as FAMEs) used in the statistical model.

Salmon

Most salmon products come from either Norway or Chile, and the two have significant price differences and values. It is therefore crucial that the label claims of any fish oil supplement can be verified. In the study, FAMEs were analyzed, and carbon and hydrogen isotope ratios determined using GC-MS-IRMS.

Discriminant analysis gave a correct prediction of 94.29% (Figure 1), showing that the two regional products could be clearly determined.

Figure 1: Discriminant analysis: Atlantic salmon (Norway) vs. Atlantic Salmon (Chile). Correct prediction: 94.29%

Cod

Similar to the salmon situation, Iceland and Norway have price discrepancies between products derived from each region’s cod. However, the two countries are physically very close, meaning there may be less extreme differences between the two diets and habitats, and therefore more similarity between isotopic fingerprints.

Despite the close proximity of the cod species, the multi-isotope method was able to discriminate the fish oil origin with a correct prediction of 97.22% (Figure 2). Based on this score, we can see the technique is highly accurate and reliable, making it a strong choice for fish oil determination.

Figure 2: Discriminant analysis: Arctic cod (Iceland) vs. Arctic cod (Norway). Correct prediction: 97.22%

GC-MS-IRMS Paves the Way for More Reliable Analyses of Fish Oil Authenticity

GC-MS-IRMS is a powerful technique that can determine the origin of fish oil by elucidating structure and isotope ratio. The study here shows the potential of GC-MS-IRMS in verifying the geographical origin of matrices with emerging commercial value and high adulteration risks—and validates the method, demonstrating that the resulting data provides conclusive answers about fish oil origins. Crucially, the technique is suitable even for products deriving from geographic regions close to one another.

We anticipate that isotope fingerprint analysis will continue to grow in the industry. With plans to use the technique to discriminate between different fish species underway, adopting GC-MS-IRMS methods into food analysis supports the need to uphold product authenticity and maintain consumer trust.

The authors kindly thank Orivo for collaboration on this study and providing the samples for analysis.

Frank Meek, Orkin
Bug Bytes

Make Your Facility A No-Fly Zone: Fly Prevention Practices

By Frank Meek
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Frank Meek, Orkin

Flies are speedy breeders, disease spreaders, vectors of contamination and a costly pest for food manufacturing and processing facilities if not handled appropriately. One female fly can create hundreds of eggs in five or six days and potentially introduce many microorganisms and pathogens.

It might be surprising that such a small pest can have a major impact on your business, but luckily there are preventive measures you can implement to help keep their presence to a minimum while ensuring food safety regulations are met.

The types of flies that impact food-handling establishments the most are “filth” flies, which transmit diseases, and “nuisance” flies, which typically do not. While these pests are all flies, different types of flies require different control methods.

Available On Demand         Special Delivery: Avoid Pests at Your Receiving DockPrevention

What attracts flies to your facility? “Filth” flies (such as house flies and blow flies) are attracted to odors first, then food waste, organic build up, sewage and feces. In comparison, “nuisance” flies (such as vinegar/fruit flies, drain flies and phorid flies) flock to overripe or decaying fruits, vegetables or other organic materials.

Flies typically enter buildings through frequently opened doors and improperly sealed openings such as drains/pipes, ventilation systems and windows. Because of this, preventive tactics like exclusion should be an important part of your pest control program.

The best way to help deter flies is to seek a pest control provider that offers an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) program. IPM is a sustainable system that focuses on the prevention of pests by implementing proactive techniques that help reduce the need for reactive treatments. A successful IPM program is environmentally conscious and addresses the reasons pests are attracted to your facility. IPM is comprised of a team effort between you and your pest control provider. Once implemented, your IPM program should be reviewed annually with your pest management professional to ensure continued improvement.

Now that you’re aware of what causes these flies to frequent your place of business and the best way to deter them, here are some tips that will help while working closely with your pest control provider:

Sanitation

Proper sanitation can help eliminate the items pests are attracted to. As mentioned earlier, vinegar flies and phorid are attracted to food, grease and other organic matter that can accumulate in drains and other places. Foul odors from decaying foods can also attract flies, which is why maintaining a sanitary environment is essential to keeping these pests away. Proper sanitation can also help reduce the possibility of transmission of diseases and contamination of products, which in turn will protect your business’s reputation and bottom line. Here are a few steps you can take now to improve your sanitation routine, so flies stay away:

  • Keep dumpsters and trash cans as far away from the facility as possible and work with your waste management company to routinely clean or rotate your dumpster so flies and other harmful pests aren’t enticed.
  • Install an odor control device where needed to eliminate any foul smells that might attract flies.
  • Remove trash, debris and food from areas like employee lockers or breakrooms multiple times throughout the day.
  • Keep tight lids on interior trash receptacles, change the liners daily and regularly clean out the bottom of the bins.
  • Regularly clean machinery that handles food, as joints and crevices can build up organic matter and attract pests.
  • Wipe down counters and high-touch areas using a proper disinfectant so you can remove any bacteria and pathogens on the surface as well.

Sanitation is crucial to the food processing, manufacturing and service industries due to the importance of food safety. If you don’t already have a rigorous sanitation routine in place, work with your pest control provider to review your current schedule and how you can improve it to help ensure flies are kept outside where they belong.

Facility Maintenance and Exclusion

Part of keeping pests out involves making sure your facility is kept in a good condition. Flies don’t need a lot of space to get in and out of buildings, and a well-maintained business can help keep all kinds of pests away.

Exclusion—using preventive methods to help eliminate pest entry points—is another helpful way to keep flies from entering your facility. The following tips will help keep flies out of your buildings:

  • Walk through your facility regularly with your pest control provider to address any facility maintenance work that should be done and pest control methods that need to be refreshed.
  • Seal any cracks, holes and crevices as soon as you notice them to avoid pests accessing your building.
  • Have fly lights and mechanical traps installed to monitor fly activity and further customize your treatment plan. These traps can be used in many areas of your facility. Work with your pest control provider to determine the best locations and type of device needed. It’s important to keep in mind that fly lights and mechanical traps monitor the efficiency of your overall fly control program, and alone are not a complete control option.
  • Seal all doors and windows with weather stripping. This will aid in closing the small gaps that flies hunt for when doors and windows are closed.
  • Limit lighting around the entrances of your facility to help discourage flying insects. If you must, use sodium-vapor light bulbs near entryways, as these are less appealing to insects than fluorescent bulbs (which draw pests in, especially at night)
  • Work with your pest control provider to train your staff on a protocol for spotting and reporting signs of pest activity. This can help catch pests before they become a bigger problem and helps you save time and money later. After all, your employees know your facility just as well as you do.

Flies in your facility can be a symptom of a problem, and the source of that problem will be unique to the fly species and weak spots in your specific facility. It’s important to maintain a fly prevention plan that will ensure the safety of your employees, products and customers as well as your reputation.

Most pest control providers offer complimentary staff training that clarifies the role your employees play in preventing pest infestations. With help from your employees, maintaining a successful fly control program can become an easy part of your daily operations. By following these tips and partnering with a reliable pest control provider who understands your industry and unique needs, your facility will be on its way to being a no-fly zone in no time.

Miguel Villa

USDA FSIS Integrates Salmonella Quantification Testing into Regional Labs

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Miguel Villa

In June, the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Services (FSIS) announced that it was rethinking its approach to Salmonella in poultry based on a review of data from 2015 to 2020 that showed a higher than anticipated reduction in Salmonella-contaminated chicken parts but no corresponding decrease in Salmonella-related illnesses attributable to poultry products.

Part of the new approach, shared in July, is the integration of Salmonella quantification testing in FSIS regional laboratories. The agency is now using GENE-UP QUANT Salmonella assay from bioMérieux, a non-enrichment quantification diagnostic tool for Salmonella.

We spoke with Miguel Villa, vice president of industrial applications for the Americas at bioMérieux to learn more about the new assay and how quantification methods may better serve public health initiatives.

Food Safety Tech (FST): How did your work with USDA FSIS come about?

Villa: bioMerieux is a French company with many, many years in the field of in vitro diagnostics. The background of the company is in human health care and life sciences. The legacy of this group is in vaccines going back to the time of Louis Pasteur. In fact, the founder of the group was a disciple of Louis Pasteur.

For the past 30 years, we have also been designing and manufacturing diagnostic tools and tests for the pharmaceutical and food industries. And for the past three years we—and other companies—have been in dialogue with the USDA FSIS and the FDA about the use of quantification for food safety and food testing for the benefit of public health.

There was discussion about the fact that, after years and years of better controls, increased testing and an increasing regulatory framework around food safety the level of foodborne illness that we continue to see is not where the regulators or the public want it to be. Based on that, we have had discussions about what are the next steps and how can we take this further to reduce diseases that are coming from food sources. There is a lot of focus on animal protein products, and one of the main contaminants has been Salmonella.

FST: What are some of the concerns or limitations of the current or traditional standards of testing?

Villa: The regulations now are focused on the presence or absence of Salmonella, and the regulators have accepted recently that we need to do more. One of the things that has been discussed quite a bit is quantification—not only do we want to know whether Salmonella is present, we want to know how much is present. This is what the GENE-UP QUANT Salmonella assay measures.

How this works is, whenever the FSIS gets a particular sample that is positive, they will use the assay to check how much Salmonella there is to get a better understanding of what they’re dealing with in terms of risk to public health.

FST: This is a non-enrichment detection method, why is that important?

Villa: True quantification can only come from the original sample. If you do something to that sample to stimulate growth, the organism typically does not grow in a linear fashion or you might be promoting limits of growth in that medium. So, the picture you get after enrichment is not exactly what is in the original sample, which is what you’re trying to understand.

FST: Is the assay quantifying only the density of Salmonella in the sample or is it also looking at serotypes?

Villa: Only the quantity. We are not looking at serotypes at this stage, but we are involved in the development of serotyping tools based on what we see coming down the road.

FST: Is the technology behind the GENE UP QUANT assay a new technology or new to the food safety industry?

Villa: GENE UP is a PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test, and PCR has been around for more than 20 years, so the tool itself is not new. What is new—or what is recent—are the methods that we are using to develop tests. They are more accurate and precise. And they are able to use mathematical modeling to correlate the things that you see in the sample, quantify them and also assess them accurately from a sample that is not enriched.

In the future, we will use the same techniques to develop rapid, accessible tools to identify specific serotypes.

FST: The USDA FSIS has brought this testing into its regional laboratories, are food manufacturers and processors also using these in their facilities? Should they be thinking about that?

Villa: Now that it is public knowledge that the FSIS is using this testing and performing Salmonella quantification, they are educating the market about why they’re doing this. As a result, we are beginning to receive inquiries from clients of ours about the test. It is not a mandate at this stage, but for their own risk management processes, many companies will likely start incorporating it.

FST:  What is the benefit of quantification? Why is it important to regulators and food safety professionals to know not only if Salmonella is present, but how much?

Villa: The industry has been very interested in moving away from presence/absence testing only for a while, because many people think that not all Salmonella is pathogenic. In addition, we need to find better ways to gauge risk but at the same time not be as costly or as shotgun in our approach.

Quantification was recognized several years ago as a potential way for us to start correlating clinical outcomes—or the lack of them—with certain levels of Salmonella. We think there will come a time where people will start to agree that one of the data points you need as part of your risk assessment to make decisions at an industrial level is how much Salmonella is in the original sample. If it’s below a certain level, it may not be considered as risky.

In the future, by combining quantification and serotyping, we believe that we will be able to give manufacturers very accurate readings with all the information needed to make good decisions and good calls about their products.

 

Vanessa Coffman, Ph.D.

How To Implement a Strong Food Safety Culture

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Vanessa Coffman, Ph.D.

Creating a company culture that embraces food safety is paramount to protecting your business and end users. But, developing a strong food safety culture takes time, effort and a buy-in from leadership.

We spoke with Vanessa Coffman, Ph.D., director of the Alliance to STOP Foodborne Illness, to discuss what it takes to create a company culture committed to food safety and what is holding companies and employees back from speaking up and taking action when safety concerns are identified.

Food Safety Tech (FST): How do companies get started in implementing a strong food safety culture?

Dr. Coffman: I think it’s really important to remember that every company in the food space already has a food safety culture. They may just not know it. So, a good first step is to assess your current food safety culture. What’s going right? What’s going wrong? From there, outline where you would like to go.

FST: How do you assess your current food safety culture?

Dr. Coffman: Talking with your employees and asking questions is a good start. There are some questionnaires available online to help you assess your current culture. It’s hard, though, because a lot of them are not scientifically validated, largely because food safety culture is amorphous and it’s also new.

We have a number of resources available on our website, including a Food Safety Culture Toolkit for businesses.

FST: How do company leaders motivate employees to play an active role in ensuring safe food processing and handling?

Dr. Coffman: That is really, really important. You can incentivize people through a rewards and recognition program, which is what a lot of our Alliance member-companies are doing.

I also think that getting into the heart and not just the mind of the employee is important. We have a lot of video resources and stories from foodborne illness survivors and people who have lost loved ones to foodborne illness. These are good motivators to help your team understand what can happen and how important every single person’s role is in the the production of safe food.

FST: How are companies incentivizing their employees to embrace food safety practices?

Dr. Coffman: It can be as simple as recognizing an employee of the month—a food safety culture employee of the month—and having a parking spot dedicated to that person or putting their name in the company newsletter.

Sometimes those big outward shows of recognition aren’t the best for every employee, and maybe somebody would rather get a little monetary bonus. Some businesses have taken employees or teams that have done really well out to lunch with the executives or someone who is well respected in the company. Getting an hour off from work may be a really great reward.

There are a lot of example of ways you can incentivize folks to do the right thing, but ultimately you want a culture of people wanting to do the right thing. That’s the most important aspect of a good food safety culture. You’re not doing it because you’re going to win a prize, but because it’s the right thing to do.

FST: Who, ultimately, is responsible for spearheading and developing a company’s food safety culture?

Dr. Coffman: That’s a really complicated question. Everybody needs to be a part of it and everybody needs to buy in to building a positive food safety culture at a company. That includes frontline workers, maintenance workers and the top executives.

We have been doing a webinar series in partnership with the FDA, and we have gotten a lot of questions about who should be leading these efforts. While it is the front-line workers that have the ability to stop the line, note a problem or report a safety issue, if you do not have buy in from your executives, there is no motivation for the people on the front line to do the right thing. So, getting the company leaders—the C-suite and the middle management people—involved is critical.

FST: Do you have any tips or recommendations on how to speak to the people in the C-suite to help them understand the importance of food safety?

Dr. Coffman: A lot of times people who are not involved in food safety day-to-day are incentivized by different things or see things a little bit differently. Some of things we have found that people who are in the C-suite respond to or are concerned with include the cost of a recall, the cost of getting sued and the cost of brand damage. Those things are really, really important for business leaders to understand. But, as with other employees, you also need reach their hearts.

Join us at the Food Safety Consortium in Parsippany, NJ, October 19-21 and take part in our panel discussion, “Communicating to the C-Suite.”

Everybody has a family, everybody has friends, everybody has people they love and they would never want to see those people get hurt by something that they fed them or by something that their company created. So, really tapping into the hearts is important in addition to presenting those cold, hard numbers, which you do sometimes need.

FST: What prevents employees from being proactive about food safety or raising safety concerns?

Dr. Coffman: Termination. Getting in trouble. A lot of the companies within the Alliance have said that every single employee in their organization is allowed to stop the line. Their employees know that you will never get in trouble for stopping something if you see a problem. Unfortunately, that is not as commonplace as it should be. People who are whistleblowers get in trouble. People who bring up problems to their bosses get in trouble. And when we’re talking about food safety, if you let things slip you are putting people in danger

FST: What is the biggest misconception about food safety culture?

Dr. Coffman: That this is a linear task. That this is something that you can just do and then it’s fixed and in place. It takes a lot of planning, a lot of energy and a lot of time.

Food safety culture is not something you have to do to meet an auditing requirement. The components are not going to be black and white, yes or no. This might seem frustrating at first to those who are used to following detailed checklists and written procedures, but once a positive, mature food safety culture is established, problem areas on your checklist will likely diminish.

Food factory workers

Key Components of Environmental Control

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Food factory workers

Ready to eat foods (RTE) pose a significant risk of foodborne illness, if proper safety precautions are not followed. Key to keeping contaminants out of your RTEs and keeping regulatory action at bay is developing a strong environmental control program (ECP).

We spoke with Benjamin Miller, vice president of regulatory and scientific affairs at the Acheson Group, about the core components of an ECP and the biggest risk areas for producers of RTE foods.

There are three key components of an ECP:

  • Hygienic design of a facility and equipment
  • People management within a facility or operation
  • Sanitation

“From a facility standpoint, you want a facility that is constructed well,” says Miller. “The floor, walls and ceilings are in good condition. You have adequate water drainage, if you’re going to be using a wet clean as part of your sanitation program and, from the equipment standpoint, you want equipment that is designed to be cleaned and is easy to clean. That is one of the areas where we see some of the biggest issues in terms of risk from environmental contaminants and pathogens.”

There are multiple challenges to keeping equipment clean and santized, notes Miller. And it starts with a lack of standardization. There is little regulation on equipment design for food processing, although there have been efforts among industry, with groups such as the 3-A Consortium in the dairy industry and the European Hygienic Engineering and Design Group (EHEDG). “But a lot of equipment is custom fabricated in the food manufacturing space, and equipment is expensive and has a long serviceable life span,” says Miller. “So, while we do understand the good principles of hygienic design, those are not always baked into equipment design, either because of the cost or the complexity of the design of the equipment itself.”

Equipment Considerations

When investigating new equipment or reviewing your existing equipment, you want to look at the materials used as well as placement of the equipment. “We think about stainless steel as being easy to clean and sanitize, but even with stainless steel there are different finishes that can make it more difficult to clean, so you need to think about the the different finishes that come on the equipment, the seams where the weld points are and how smooth those weld points are,” says Miller.

Flat surfaces can collect dirt, debris and water. “Rotating existing infrastructure or equipment components can make a significant difference in cleanability, drying and run off,” says Miller.

The placement of the equipment in the facility can also affect cleanability. “A good analogy is, if you look under the hood of your car some engines are in there so tight that you have to take everything apart to get in there to fix or replace a specific part,” says Miller. “Other cars, you can practically climb inside and get to every piece of equipment easily.”

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If equipment that needs to be cleaned and maintained on a regular basis is up against a wall, it will be very difficult to get back there to work on the equipment or do a thorough cleaning.

“You need to think about hygienic design, equipment design and placement, materials selection and cleanability. These are all really important. The other thing is flow—facility flow and people movement within a facility,” says Miller.

Facility Traffic Flow

Some pathogens will occur more frequently in areas where raw food is handled. People can also bring contaminants into a facility on their clothes or shoes. Limiting foot and equipment traffic within the facility—and restricting high care (or high risk) areas where RTEs are assembled and packaged—reduces the risk of food contamination.

“Ideally, you want a very clear delineation between where the food is raw up to the point where the kill step is applied and then where the RTE environment is,” says Miller. “You want a linear process and design flow from where you receive your raw materials, where you do your raw material prep and assembly, through to the area where you do your cook or kill step. The people and food should flow through the environment in a way that the risk of contamination from raw product is minimal.”

Developing a captive footwear program where employees in high care areas are provided with dedicated footwear and limiting traffic within those areas is required. “Often when we see people struggling with their environmental control programs, it’s because they don’t have adequate separation of people movement and equipment movement within the facility. Either everyone’s going everywhere or they have a defined program, it is just not enforced,” says Miller.

He relates the challenge to an age-old design adage: “There is a saying that, if you’re designing a campus, wait to put down the sidewalks until you see where people naturally walk,” says Miller. “Because they will choose the most efficient route to get from building A to building B. That’s often what happens in the food manufacturing or processing facility. If you don’t have active enforcement in high care areas, people will naturally take the most efficient route to go from point A to point B, and that creates risk.”

The best approach to reduce that risk is to engineer out the hazards, so people don’t have the option not to comply. “You can close off spaces that are natural cut throughs so that people cannot take the shortcut,” says Miller.

Visual programs, where employees in the high care areas wear white smocks and those in the low care areas wear red, for instance, can help with oversight and compliance. “But you also need to positively reinforce behavior, which gets to the hot topic of food safety culture,” says Miller. “Is it acceptable to cut through, or is somebody going to stop that person and report what is happening because your team understands the risk? And are you addressing that behavior in a nonpunitive way, and instead explaining why this is important? Companies should be rewarding people who call out safety hazards as well. The primary challenge for facilities that are not designed well in terms of either equipment design or traffic flow is that it takes time and effort to enforce and build that culture.”

Drainage and Sanitation

Drains can a source of contamination if not properly designed, used and maintained. Trench drains are harder to clean and maintain than circular drains. “People sometimes use their drains as a garbage disposal, which provides food for bacteria,” says Miller. “Limit the amount of food going down the drain and, ideally, you want to use a circular drain with stainless steel sieve in high care areas.”

In the past, it was not uncommon for facilities to perform high-pressure cleaning of drains, which can then aerolize the bacteria in the drain. “Use low pressure mechanical or steam cleaning of drains,” says Miller. “Again, this comes back to design. You want to start with well-designed drains and follow good sanitation practices.”

Sanitation and cleaning products used in food processing and manufacturing faciities are regulated and safe to use in the food environment, provided all instructions are followed. “Read chemical labels to make sure you are using the correct concentrations and the correct cleaning/rinse cycle,” says Miller. “The label determines how the cleaning agent should be used and whether it can come in contact with food.”

Companies can help maintain a strong ECP by giving their food safety and quality assurance teams a seat at the table, particularly when developing their capital improvement plans. “If you know a particular piece of equipment is really hard to clean and has been a source of contamination over the last couple of years, how can you repair or redesign that equipment so that it is easier to clean or replace it with something that’s going to be easier to clean?” says Miller. “A key piece of managing food safety is understanding where your highest risk points are, and then making sure those areas are part of your capital improvement plan.”

 

 

Darin Detwiler, Northeastern University

ESG and Food Safety

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Darin Detwiler, Northeastern University

Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) is a term that is gaining traction among industry, investors and regulators. We spoke with Darin Detwiler, LP.D., M.A.Ed., assistant teaching professor of food policy and director of the Master of Science in Regulatory Affairs of Food and Food Industries program at Northeastern University’s College of Professional Studies in Boston, to learn more about ESG and its growing visibility in the food and beverage industry.

Food Safety Tech (FST): There has been an increase in coverage of ESG in a variety of industries. What is ESG, and do you see the food and beverage industry embracing these ideas?

Dr. Detwiler: When you talk about the Responsible Corporate Officer (RCO) Doctrine, that has received more attention within the food industry, especially with some increases in Department of Justice activity. When there are outbreaks or recalls, people are asking, is this case an RCO case?

When you look at Peanut Corporation of America and the Jensen Brothers, so many key landmark court cases within the food industry, there were RCO violations. The next layer of the onion is Corporate Social Responsibility. And we can talk about that a great deal. This involves looking at the economic, legal, ethical and the philanthropic responsibilities of companies.

It is not specific to food; it is companies and executives overall. But, unlike RCO, corporate social responsibility has been more theoretical. ESG is a way of quantifying and measuring these components of corporate activity.

Join Darin Detwiler, LP.D, at the Food Safety Consortium on October 19-21 in Parsippany, New Jersey.

FST: How might measuring ESG enhance food safety?

Dr. Detwiler: When you look at the Peanut Corporation of America, for example, nearly 100 charges were filed against the CEO, his brother, the QA manager and three plant managers. And those charges were not about making people sick or killing people. Those charges were fraud, conspiracy and obstruction of justice.

If you look at this case in terms of food safety, it doesn’t look like a big food safety case. It’s more of a corporate social responsibility thing, something that was measured and prosecuted outside of the FDA.

When you look at Chipotle, which made news with a series of outbreaks between 2015 and 2018, they made big news in terms of the $25 million penalty—the largest penalty ever imposed in a food safety case. But Chipotle was also fined $1.3 million for child labor law violations in Massachusetts.

Similarly, when you look at Blue Bell Creameries, which was hit with the second-largest fine at $17.25 million for a listeria outbreak in 2015, the former CEO now is facing charges regarding his conspiracy to cover up this information not only from the stockholders but from consumers as well.

The point I’m making is, one could say that child labor law violations have nothing to do with foodborne illness outbreaks. But do they? When you start looking at the bigger picture of ESG data that can be collected by the companies, I think that one could start to see a pattern. That pattern being, if a company has executives that are making decisions that are illegal in one of their houses, they are also taking shortcuts and making poor decisions in terms of food safety. These bigger picture issues of corporate social responsibility could be measured by adequate data collection and monitoring using ESG.

Will an ESG score prevent an outbreak or a recall? We don’t know. But here is what happens when you have an outbreak or a recall. Over time, our options to resolve an issue decrease and our liabilities increase. More people buy the products, more people eat the products and more people become exposed to others who are sick.

The best way to minimize liability and maximize options to resolve an issue is to try to be proactive and even predictive. If we can say that there is a stronger likelihood of this happening here because of these indicators, we can stop before a product goes into a later stage of production or before it goes to distribution. ESG is one potential way to do this.

FST: Should companies be using ESG to vet their suppliers?

Dr. Detwiler: If you are a company that has a lot of ingredients coming from a lot of different suppliers, you want to minimize the risk of getting ingredients from people that you can’t necessarily trust 100%. One proactive approach, perhaps, is to look at ESG scores and say, “Yes, we could save 7% on costs by working with this company, but this company does not have a good record in terms of the ESG metrics.” This transparency is another way to help companies make as clear a decision as possible regarding suppliers and safety.

There are companies right now that are working to create networks of buyers, sellers and distributors, where members share and have access to data that all members provide relating to not only certifications and inspections, but ESG as well, such that there is a more clear understanding of the people that you are partnering with.

Circling back to the Peanut Corporation of America outbreak, one of the things people don’t talk about is that companies that were buying peanut products from Peanut Corporation of America blindly accepted the inspection and audit reports they were receiving. They did not send their own third-party auditors out there. And one of the lawyers did ask, “Why is there no pressure on these companies to be responsible for checking up on their ingredients?” Which is an interesting question to ask. Did the companies skip their due diligence in making sure the processing lived up to the paperwork?

If I’m a food company and I want to partner with or get ingredients from another company, no one is going to say, “I’m OK partnering with a company that’s paying millions of dollars in penalties because of labor violations and fraud.” If you’re only looking at food safety, you’re only looking at one piece of the information you need. Whereas, if we ask bigger questions, which very much align with what ESG would collect, then a clearer picture of a company emerges. And perhaps that’s what we need to start focusing on more.

FST: Where can companies find the criteria for measuring and tracking ESG in their own organizations?

Dr. Detwiler: That’s a great question, and it really is evolving right now. Back when the Chipotle outbreaks were happening, I was contacted by venture capitalists and investment groups and they were saying, “Chipotle was a no-brainer. All you had to do was look at their growth, look at their profits, look at their stock prices and boom, you knew this was a good company.” And they realized they were asking the wrong questions. So, what questions should we be asking to get a bigger or a more accurate picture of a company? In the food industry, it’s not necessarily a one-size-fits-all measure. You have things like organic and kosher, grass-fed and cage-free, but these measures do not pertain to all companies or products. So we have seen some criteria and guidelines, but there are going to be commodity- and company-specific measures to consider as well.

FST: What are the challenges of integrating ESG as part of the regulatory environment and internal company policies?

Dr. Detwiler: There is a sense of, do we really need to burden these companies with collecting this data and having their ESG or corporate social responsibility information exposed to the world? You can look at it like cutting edge technology. It is here. There are plenty of companies that are already using it. And the companies that are currently saying that it’s just too difficult to collect this information, well, on the other side of their operations, when it comes to financials and marketing, it’s amazing how quickly they can adopt the latest technologies to maximize their profitability.

Here’s the deal, I buried my son in 1993 after the Jack in the Box e coli outbreak. We filed charges against Jack In The Box and the parent company and the food maker and the meat supplier. Their lawyers put us through the ringer. They wanted our tax information. They wanted my educational records and they wanted access to my military records. They wanted all kinds of information for their lawyers to determine the value of my son’s life. In that case, the idea of transparency was of value to the industry, but we can’t burden the companies?

Still, the reality is demanding transparency from corporations has been an issue. I was at an event—it was related to blockchain—and one topic that came up among the companies is the risk of being a first adopter. There is a saying, “the first adopter is the first to be crucified.” You put this information out there and something goes wrong and now it’s going to be tied to you. I do understand that concern.

But we have label laws in this country, for example, so demanding or expecting transparency is not new. The challenge is, if we want to promote transparency, do we have any guidelines around it? If it doesn’t have any teeth, then it’s not going to mean anything. Your company may have the same exact score as my company, but what was the authentic collection of data that was used to measure that?

FST: Do you think we will see more requirements for the implementation of ESG from regulators in the near future?

Dr. Detwiler: It is interesting right now with the Officer of the Inspector General evaluating the FDA and whether the FDA did the right thing in terms of what they knew, when they new it and the distance of time between that and when they took action during its inspections and investigation into the Abbott baby formula facility.

People are looking at this stuff more, and the government is starting to evaluate a lot more. They’re not just accepting it as the cost of doing business. I often talk about invisible threats, in terms of things like e coli. We can’t see pathogens, but perhaps something like ESG can make these invisible threats more visible. There are a lot of failures in the farm-to-fork process that can be identified after the fact. ESG many be a tool to provide more clarity before an outbreak or recall occurs.

Dallas Henderson, RizePoint

Five Food Safety Changes That Are Here to Stay

By Dallas Henderson
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Dallas Henderson, RizePoint

While the COVID-19 pandemic caused monumental disruption and chaos for the food industry, the silver lining is that it resulted in five positive (and permanent) changes as we move forward in our “new normal.” A common denominator for all these changes is technology, which is driving more informed decisions, additional transparency, training support, auditing improvements and increased collaboration.

1. Technology Is Making us Safer and Smarter

The pandemic led to increased use of and comfort with technology, and tech tools are game changers when it comes to elevating safety and quality. Food businesses are increasingly using digital tools for critical tasks, such as inspections and line checks, and tech solutions make these efforts faster, easier and more accurate than manual processes. Tech solutions can provide comprehensive views of a business—by location or across an enterprise—helping operators identify and resolve issues quickly and completely.

Many operators are relying on tech tools and software to review and analyze real-time data so they can make more informed business decisions. For instance, they can easily access historical sales patterns to help improve a variety of operational decisions, from staffing decisions to re-order quantities.

Digital solutions allow brands to streamline operations, improve safety and quality management, manage (or cut) costs and improve inventory, scheduling and ordering.

2. A More Effective Approach to Audits

Historically, food businesses relied on annual or semi-annual in-person inspections but, as it turns out, these traditional audits were not an ideal approach. Many food business employees dreaded these inspections, viewing independent auditors with trepidation. Employees worried they would be punished for any violations that the auditor found. The auditors looked for infractions but didn’t help teams correct areas of noncompliance or educate them on how to mitigate risks. There was no collaboration or education associated with the inspections, and the audits felt punitive and demoralizing.

During the pandemic, travel restrictions meant that food businesses had to figure out new ways to inspect their facilities. As a result, employees had to collaborate to identify (and fix) issues and improve compliance through more frequent self-inspections. More organizations used a remote auditing approach, which allowed employees to interact with auditors, ask questions, get immediate feedback and learn more about the process.

When employees were involved in the inspections, they became more invested, engaged and empowered. They started to feel responsible for their organizations’ safety and quality successes, rather than feeling accountable for mistakes. Once they better understood what to look for, they could watch for safety and quality infractions during their daily shifts and correct any issues immediately.

This combination approach (traditional, remote and self-audits) provides significant benefits, including greater oversight and data collection, more frequent inspections and more employee engagement. Moving forward, many brands will use all three auditing methods and enjoy many benefits of doing so.

3. Collaborative Cultures Are the New Norm

The rise of collaborative coaching is a very exciting and positive development that has evolved over the past few years. As mentioned above, food businesses are moving towards a continuous quality model with more frequent self-assessments and collaborative coaching in addition to traditional onsite audits. Additionally, many brands are hiring safety and quality coaches, who work with locations to teach their teams more about proper protocols, empowering them to take more responsibility for these efforts.

These coaches don’t just lecture employees about the safety rules, they explain why the rules are so critical, helping teams understand the importance of compliance. They also make employees feel like part of the solution, rather than part of the problem. This effort helps build strong food safety cultures and environments of continuous learning, while also boosting compliance and reducing risk. The result is safer businesses, products and practices.

4. The Rise of Transparency

Guests and employees want transparency about how brands are keeping them safe and healthy. They want to see businesses taking new COVID-19-related protocols seriously, with regular monitoring of CDC recommendations, constant cleaning and sanitizing, regular handwashing, employee temperature checks, etc. During times of COVID spikes, they want to see employees wearing masks and practicing proper social distancing. Gone are the days of employees being expected to work while ill.

In addition to heightened safety transparency, many organizations are increasing data transparency to improve and streamline operations. Brands that use digital tools and software have better, more accurate and holistic views of data. They can use this information to boost efficiency, cut costs, schedule smarter, maintain accurate inventory and make more informed operational decisions, as opposed to relying on gut instinct.

5. Increased Need for Training and Cross-training

Food safety training was essential before the pandemic hit, and now ongoing training has become a top priority. Every employee should be educated about food safety rules, COVID-19 protocols and how to correctly use tech tools to maximize safety and minimize risks. Employers must make training part of each new employee’s onboarding process—especially as our industry experiences record high turnover—but don’t view it as a “one and done” endeavor. Training should be ongoing.

Food providers are using technology to push out reminders and updates directly to employees’ phones so that resources are available right at their fingertips and everyone gets consistent information. Due to COVID-19 and the ongoing worker shortage, we have also learned the importance of cross-training. Employees should be trained to handle multiple roles and responsibilities, so if someone is out sick (or quits), staff members can be deployed wherever they’re needed.

Employers and employees are moving away from viewing training as a chore and instead viewing it as an opportunity to improve knowledge and behaviors. The key to long-term improvement and compliance is ongoing training and a willingness to take immediate corrective actions if/when employees aren’t following protocols to ensure compliance.

There is no denying that the COVID pandemic has been tremendously disruptive to our industry. However, positive changes have emerged from the chaos. The food industry has shown incredible resiliency, flexibility and tenacity throughout this difficult time, and has adopted new protocols, leveraged innovative technologies, increased transparency and embraced collaboration. These changes will likely be permanent, which is good news for the health and safety of our guests, employees and businesses.

In-line micro-hole detection

Technologies for In-line Monitoring of Micro-Holes in Packaging

By Paolo Tondello
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In-line micro-hole detection

In-line verification for the presence of micro-holes throughout food packaging production is possible by means of an innovative application of IR (Infrared) spectroscopy, or via gas sensors capable of detecting the leakage of target molecules present inside packages.

The areas of application sectors can be modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) packaged products, bakery products preserved with alcohol, food products preserved in nitrogen or air whose release of aromas can be detected.

Today, there are many preservation technologies available on the market for packaged food that lengthen the product’s shelf life while ensuring its organoleptic characteristics and food safety. Replacing air with a gas mixture (MAP) or with nitrogen, or by adding alcohol, are some preservation methods that cover a wide range of products. For all products, it is essential to check:

  • The type of packaging, correctly barrier-coated to prevent the leakage of any preservation substances
  • The gas mixture for MAP packaged products is correct for the type of product
  • The presence of alcohol inside the package for bakery products
  • Via seal test

This last point, checking for the presence of micro-holes in the packaging, is crucial to avoid thwarting all efforts to optimize the packaging’s preservation mixture. Therefore, let’s examine how it is possible to perform a seal test, and the innovations brought about by IR spectroscopy technology that introduce important elements of in-line monitoring of the presence of micro-holes in packaging and the seal’s integrity.

In-line micro-hole detection
Checking for the presence of micro-holes in the packaging, is crucial to avoid thwarting all efforts to optimize the packaging’s preservation mixture. Image courtesy of FT System.

Micro-Holes in Packaging: Consequences of Spot Checks

The presence of a micro-hole in packaging is a particularly critical problem in the food industry, since it can lead to poor food preservation and the loss of its organoleptic characteristics—as well as the possible formation of mold.

Micro-holes may form as a result of defective sealing processes or during the various processing stages of the package, and can lead to negative consequences of the product days later, when the package is already in the shop or on the shelf of a supermarket. Therefore, it is important to make sure the container is intact during the production stage.

The procedures normally in use today to check for micro-holes are spot checks, which detect the loss of pressure or leakage of gas from the package by immersing the product in water, or via an instrument that applies a “dry” vacuum. In the first case, which is called a bubble test, the product is immersed in a container filled with water that is hermetically sealed and to which an external vacuum is applied. This encourages bubbles to come out from any micro-holes, which can, at this point, be checked visually or by means of a camera.

In the second case, a vacuum is created that is carried out by placing the package inside a bell. The molecules leaked from the package (such as CO2 in the case of MAP products) or loss of pressure are indications of the presence of a micro-hole.

The main limitation of these methods is, first and foremost, that of being destructive, since it is no longer possible to reuse the tested package. Over and above this is the fact that they are, of course, merely spot checks—and therefore not comprehensive in their analysis.

Spot-checking does not check the integrity of the entire production, which means that defects are not detected on a regular basis. Moreover, this method is costly in terms of re-processing batches should a micro-hole be detected in the batch being tested.

Modern Applications for Testing In-Line Micro-Holes

The need for in-line identification of micro-holes on 100% of production is pressing, and research for possible solutions has been focused on this need in recent years. Technology is needed that must be:

  • Rapid, in order to be applied to the line’s speed;
  • Reliable in detecting micro-holes;
  • With few false rejects, even at high speed;
  • Characterized by low maintenance costs;
  • Easily manageable for format changes, which are becoming increasingly frequent in production.

This has all been made possible by means of application of IR spectroscopy, or the use of gas sensors for in-line inspection of the presence of holes and micro-holes. These non-destructive technologies make it possible to detect in-line leakages in packaging, package by package, by identifying target escaping molecules.

The air around the package is extracted and taken to an analysis chamber containing an IR beam or gas sensor that can detect the presence of target molecules—and therefore micro-holes. This way, it is possible to automatically inspect every single package, avoiding problems of returns and consumer dissatisfaction caused by poor preservation.

IR Spectroscopy and Gas Sensors

The technologies that enable in-line inspection are based on nondispersive infrared technology, which offer rapid response times and reliable measured values. In the case of very small leakages, measurements with very low concentration differences or measurements by means of containers, the technology is based on the principle of laser spectroscopy.

A monochromatic radiation beam emitted by a laser interacts with the gas molecules being measured. The radiation wavelength coincides with one of the absorption lines of the molecule. Measuring the intensity and absorption profile of the radiation with a photodetector makes it possible to detect the presence of a gas, and determine the concentration of the molecule being measured.

For certain gases, the high sensitivity of measurement can be obtained by using a modulation technique of the absorption measurement known as wavelength modulation spectroscopy (WMS). It involves transmitting sinusoidal modulation to the wavelength variation of the laser radiation, then creating a beat between the signal detected from the photodetector and the modulation frequency.

The distinct advantage of WMS is that it eliminates constant contributions to the absorption, such as that of the container, thereby making it possible to significantly increase the sensitivity of the measurement. The realization of gas sensors for application in the pharmaceutical, bottling and food sectors originated at Italy’s University of Padua, where lasers have been employed to create laboratory prototypes for determining the concentration of gas pressure using absorption spectroscopy techniques.

Industrial application of these technologies has brought IR and laser spectroscopy technology to the market and into production lines, improving the way in which quality control is performed on packaged products. The non-destructive measurement techniques, based on absorption spectroscopy, are today finding new areas of use—not only to monitor package leakages, but also to monitor the internal gases and check their evolution during product shelf life.

Case History: An In-line Control of Micro-holes in the Food Industry

Let’s explore an example of micro-hole inspection via IR spectroscopy and gas sensors, and how certain challenges might be overcome.

For one company, micro-hole inspection technology was initially working by detecting molecules leaking from packages being transferred on conveyor belts. However, during the technology transfer stage, it became evident that the pressure difference between inside and outside of the container was not enough to determine the presence of micro-holes at the line’s speed without touching the package.

To combat this, a system of rollers was implemented to apply the correct pressure to force leakage of target molecules, indicating the presence of micro-holes, without damaging the packaging or the product. The rollers are designed to stress the container and the seals to encourage gas to be released in the event of a leak.

The inspection is applicable on trays as well as bags or flowpacks. Packages are inspected at 360°, both on top and at the bottom (including any longitudinal seals) by inserting air extractors also on the sides and under the package, creating a special opening in the conveyor belts.

The target molecules that can be detected with these technologies are numerous, and vary according to the type of preservation mixture. For example, it is possible to detect CO2 as a target molecule for all MAP-preserved products, or alcohol in the case of bakery products, or specific product aromas for products packaged in air or nitrogen.

Practical applications
Examples of practical applications. Figure courtesy of FT System.

Conclusion

The in-line inspection for micro-holes in packaging through the application of IR spectroscopy, or by means of gas sensors, makes it possible to go from spot checks to in-line inspections on 100% of production. The solution can be applied on trays and bags and does not require the internal gas mixture or the line speed to be changed. It can be easily integrated in existing lines and inspection is reliable, precise and repeatable.

This quality control technology has game-changing potential for products preserved in MAP, alcohol or nitrogen, since it makes it possible to check for micro-holes in the packaging and the integrity of the seal on each individual product. From practical experience in the production line, it is evident that all micro-holes are not detected by spot checks.

In addition, a return or recall, for example for the presence of mold in fresh pasta or in cheese due to a micro-hole, causes significant economic and image damage for the company. Implementing this modern application of IR spectroscopy in the line thereby makes it possible to prevent and intervene in real time on the production process to guarantee the integrity of the package and avoid problems related to safety, quality and preservation.