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Chocolate

Chocolate and Big Data: The Recipe for Food Safety Is Changing

By Steven Sklare
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Chocolate

Almost everybody loves chocolate, an ancient, basic, almost universal and primal source of pleasure. “The story of chocolate beings with cocoa trees that grew wild in the tropical rainforests of the Amazon basin and other areas in Central and South America for thousands of years… Christopher Columbus is said to have brought the first cocoa beans back to Europe from his fourth visit to the New World” between 1502 and 1504.1

Unfortunately, the production of chocolate and chocolate products today is as complex as any other global food product with supply chains that reach from one end of the world to the other. The complexity of the supply chain and production, along with the universal demand for the finished product, exposes chocolate to increasing pressure from numerous hazards, both unintentional and intentional. For example, we know that more than 70% of cocoa production takes place in West African countries, particularly the Ivory Coast and Ghana. These regions are politically unstable, and production is frequently disrupted by fighting. While production has started to expand into more stable regions, it has not yet become diversified enough to normalize the supply. About 17% of production takes place in the Americas (primarily South America) and 9% from Asia and Oceania.2

In today’s world of global commerce these pressures are not unique to chocolate. Food quality and safety experts should be armed with tools and innovations that can help them examine specific hazards and fraud pertaining to chocolate and chocolate products. In fact, the global nature of the chocolate market, requires fast reflexes that protect brand integrity and dynamic quality processes supported by informed decisions. Digital tools have become a necessity when a fast interpretation of dynamic data is needed. If a food organization is going to effectively protect the public’s health, protect their brand and comply with various governmental regulations and non-governmental standards such as GFSI, horizon scanning, along with the use of food safety intelligent digital tools, needs to be incorporated into food company’s core FSQA program.

This article pulls information from a recent industry report about chocolate products that presents an examination of the specific hazards and fraud pertaining to chocolate and chocolate products along with ways to utilize this information.

Cocoa and chocolate products rely on high quality ingredients and raw materials, strict supplier partnership schemes and conformity to clearly defined quality and safety standards. During the past 10 years there have been a significant number of food safety incidents associated with chocolate products. The presence of Salmonella enterica, Listeria monocytogenes, allergens and foreign materials in cocoa/chocolate products have been reported on a global scale. Today, information on food safety incidents and potential risks is quickly and widely available by way of the internet. However, because the pertinent data is frequently siloed, food safety professionals are unable to take full advantage of it.

Top Emerging Hazards: Chocolate Products (2013-2018)

Publicly available data, from sources such as European Union RASFF, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, UK Food Standards Agency, FDA, Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ), shows a significant increase in identified food safety incidents for cocoa/chocolate products from 2013 to 2018. For this same time period, the top emerging hazards that were identified for chocolate products were the following:

  • Allergens: 51.60%
  • Biological: 16.49%
  • Foreign bodies: 13.83%
  • Chemical: 7.45%
  • Fraud: 6.38%
  • Food additives & flavorings: 4.26%
  • Other hazards: 2.66%

By using such information to identify critical food safety protection trends, which we define to include food safety (unintentional adulteration) and food fraud (intentional adulteration, inclusive of authenticity/intentional misrepresentation) we can better construct our food protection systems to focus on the areas that present the greatest threats to public health, brand protection and compliance.

A Data Driven Approach

Monitoring Incoming Raw Materials
Assessment and identification of potential food protection issues, including food safety and fraud, at the stage of incoming raw materials is of vital importance for food manufacturers. Knowledge of the associated risks and vulnerabilities allows for timely actions and appropriate measures that may ultimately prevent an incident from occurring.

Specifically, the efficient utilization of global food safety and fraud information should allow for:

  • Identification of prevalent, increasing and/or emerging risks and vulnerabilities associated with raw materials
  • Comparative evaluation of the risk profile for different raw materials’ origins
  • Critical evaluation and risk-based selection of raw materials’ suppliers

A comprehensive risk assessment must start with the consideration of the identified food safety incidents of the raw material, which include the inherent characteristics of the raw material. Next, the origin-related risks must be taken into account and then the supplier-related risks must be examined. The full risk assessment is driven by the appropriate food safety data, its analysis and application of risk assessment scientific models on top of the data.

Using food safety intelligent digital tools to analyze almost 400 unique, chocolate product related food safety incidents around the globe provides us with important, useful insights about cocoa as a raw material, as a raw material from a specific origin and as a raw material being provided by specific suppliers. The graph below represents the results of the analysis illustrating the trend of incidents reported between 2002 and 2018. It can be observed that after a significant rise between 2009 and 2010, the number of incidents approximately doubled and remained at that level for the rest of the evaluated period (i.e., from 2010 to 2018), compared to the period from 2002 to 2005.

Cocoa incidents, FOODAKAI
Graph from Case Study: Chocolate Products: lessons learned from global food safety and fraud data and the guidance it can provide to the food industry,
an industry report from FOODAKAI. Used with permission.

By further analyzing the data stemming from the 400 food safety incidents and breaking them down into more defined hazards, for incoming raw materials, we can clearly see that chemical hazards represent the major hazard category for cocoa.

  • Chemical: 73.46%
  • Biological: 16.49%
  • Organoleptic aspects: 5.93%
  • Other Hazards: 4.38%
  • Fraud: 2.32%
  • Foreign bodies: 2.06%
  • Food additives and flavorings: .77%
  • Allergens: .52%
  • Food contact materials: .52%

Using the appropriate analytical tools, someone can drill down into the data and identify the specific incidents within the different hazard categories. For example, within the “chemical hazard” category specific hazards such as organophosphates, neonicotinoids, pyrethroids and organochlorines were identified.

Comparative Evaluation of Risk Profiles for Different Origins of Raw Materials
The main regions of origin for cocoa globally are Africa, Asia and South America. After collecting and analyzing all relevant data from recalls and border rejections and the frequency of pertinent incidents, we can accurately identify the top hazards for cocoa by region.

The top five specific hazards for the regions under discussion are listed in Table I.

Africa South America Asia
1 Organophosphate 2,4-dinitrophenol (DNP) 2,4-dinitrophenol (DNP)
2 Molds Pyrethroid Poor or insufficient controls
3 Neonicotinoid Aflatoxin Aflatoxin
4 Pyrethroid Cadmium Spoilage
5 Organochlorine Anilinopyrimidine Salmonella
Table I.  Top Five Hazards By Region

After the first level of analysis, a further interpretation of the data using the appropriate data intelligence tools can help to reach to very specific information on the nature of the incidents. This provides additional detail that is helpful in understanding how the regional risk profiles compare. For example, the prevalence of chemical contamination, as either industrial contaminants or pesticides, has been a commonly observed pattern for all three of the regions in Table I. However, beyond the general hazard category level, there are also different trends with regard to specific hazards for the three different regions. One such example is the increased presence of mold in cocoa beans coming from Africa.

The primary hazard categories for cocoa, as a raw ingredient were identified and a comparison among the primary hazards for cocoa by region (origin-specific) should take place. The next step in a data-powered supplier assessment workflow would be to incorporate our use of global food safety data in evaluating the suppliers of the raw materials.

The Role of Global Food Safety Data

This article has been focused on chocolate products but has only touched the surface in terms of the information available in the complete report, which also includes specific information about key raw materials. Let’s also be clear, that the techniques and tools used to generate this information are applicable to all food products and ingredients. As we strive to produce food safely in the 21st Century and beyond, we must adapt our methods or be left behind.

The regulatory environment the food industry must operate in has never been more intense. The threats to an organization’s brand have never been greater. This is not going to change. What must change is the way in which food companies confront these challenges.

Global food safety data can contribute to the establishment of an adaptive food safety/QA process that will provide time savings and improve a quality team’s efficiency and performance.

Based on the continuous analysis of food recalls and rejections by key national and international food authorities, a food safety / quality assurance manager could establish an adaptive supplier verification process and risk assessment process by utilizing the knowledge provided by such data. In that way, QA, procurement, food safety and quality departments can be empowered with critical supplier data that will inform the internal procedures for incoming materials and ingredients (e.g., raw materials, packaging materials) and allow for adaptive laboratory testing routines and compliance protocols. Moreover, food safety systems can become adaptive, enabling quality assurance and safety professionals to quickly update points of critical control when needed, and intervene in important stages of the chocolate manufacturing process.

References

  1. Discovering Chocolate. The Great Chocolate Discovery. Cadbury website. Retrieved from https://www.cadbury.com.au/About-Chocolate/Discovering-Chocolate.aspx.
  2. Chocolate Industry Analysis 2020 – Cost & Trends. Retrieved from https://www.franchisehelp.com/industry-reports/chocolate-industry-analysis-2020-cost-trends/.
Michele Pfannenstiel, Dirigo Food Safety
FST Soapbox

Quality Assurance and Food Safety in Cannabis-Infused Products

By Michele Pfannenstiel, DVM
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Michele Pfannenstiel, Dirigo Food Safety

The legal cannabis-infused products industry is growing with impressive and predictable rapidity. But because the rollout of new regulations occurs in an awkward and piecemeal fashion, with stark differences from one state to another, and sometimes even one county to another, uncertainty reigns.1 Many entrepreneurs are diving headlong into the nascent industry, hoping to take advantage of an uncertain regulatory environment where government audits and inspections are rare. These business owners will see quality assurance and product safety as burdens—costs to be avoided to the greatest extent possible.

I have seen this time and time again, even in the comparatively well-regulated food industry, and it is always a mistake.

If you find yourself thinking about quality assurance or food safety as a prohibitive cost, annoyance or distraction, I encourage you to change your thinking on this issue. The most successful businesses realize that product safety and quality assurance are inextricably linked with profitability. They are best thought of not as distractions, but as critical elements of an efficient and optimized process. Proper QA and safety are not costs, they are value.

Food safety and quality assurance should be seen as important elements of the process that you undertake to enforce the high standards and consistency that will win you repeat customers. The fact that they guard against costly recalls or satisfy meddlesome auditors is only a bonus. Realizing this will make your business smarter, faster and more profitable.

Learn more about the science, technology, regulatory compliance and quality management issues surrounding cannabis at the Food Labs / Cannabis Labs Conference | June 2–4, 2020If today you cannot clearly communicate your product standards to your employees and to your customers, then you have some work to do. That’s because quality assurance always begins with precise product specifications. (A good definition of “quality” is “conformance to specifications.”) How can you assess quality if you don’t have a definitive standard with which to evaluate it? My consulting firm works with food businesses both small and large, and this is where we begin every relationship. You might be surprised how often even a well-established business has a difficult time naming and describing every one of its products, let alone articulating objective standards for them.

This may be doubly difficult for fledgling businesses in the cannabis world. Because the market is so new, there are fewer agreed-upon standards to fall back on.

When we help businesses create specifications, we always look at the relevant regulations while keeping in mind customer expectations. In cannabis, the regulations just aren’t as comprehensive as they are for conventional food and agriculture. Laws and guidelines are still in flux, and different third-party standards are still competing for market dominance. Different states have entirely different standards, and don’t even agree, for example, whether cannabis edibles should be considered pharmaceuticals or food. To some extent, it’s the wild west of regulation, and as long as the federal government remains reluctant to impose national guidelines, it’s likely to remain so.

The wild west may be a good place for the unscrupulous, but it’s not good for business owners that care about the health of their customers and the long-term health of their brand. Don’t take advantage of confusing quality and safety standards by doing the least possible to get by. At some point there will be a scandal in this country when a novel cannabis product makes dozens of customers sick, or worse. You don’t want it to be yours.

With cannabis-infused products, there is a unique additional factor at play: The strength of THC and other psychoactive compounds. Again, there are few agreed-upon standards for potency testing, and relatively little oversight of the laboratories themselves. This allows labs to get sloppy, and even creates an incentive for them to return inflated THC counts; at the very least, results may hugely differ from one lab to another even for identical products.2 Some labs are ISO 17025 accredited, and some are not. Using an unaccredited laboratory may prevent your efforts to create consistent and homogeneous products.

Even in comparatively well-regulated states, such as Colorado, it is ultimately your responsibility to create products that are safe and consistent. And in the states where the politicians haven’t even figured out which department is regulating cannabis products, your standards should be tougher than whatever is officially required.

And so we look to the more established world of conventional food and agriculture as a guide for the best practices in the cannabis industry.

Hazards

The most constructive way to look at food safety, and the way your (eventual) auditors and regulators will view it, is to look at your product and process from the perspective of the potential hazards.

Some day, when regulation finally gets sorted out, you are likely to be asked to implement a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) safety system. HACCP framework recognizes three broad categories of hazards:

  • Physical hazards: Foreign material that is large enough to cause harm, such as glass or metal fragments.
  • Chemical hazards: Pesticides and herbicides, heavy metals, solvents and cleaning solutions.
  • Biological hazards: The pathogens that cause foodborne illness in your customers, such as E. coli, and other biological hazards, such as mycotoxins from molds.

All of these hazards are highly relevant to cannabis-infused product businesses.

The HACCP framework asks us to consider what steps in our process offer us the chance to definitively and objectively eliminate the risk of relevant hazards. In a cannabis cookie, for example, this might be a cooking step, a baking process that kills the Salmonella that could be lurking in your flour, eggs, chocolate or (just as likely!) the cannabis extracts themselves.

A good HACCP system is merely the capstone resting atop a larger foundational system of safety programs, including standard operating procedures, good manufacturing practices, and good agricultural practices. It’s important to use these agreed-upon practices and procedures in your own facility and to ensure that your suppliers and shippers are doing the same. Does your cultivator have a culture of safety and professionalism? Do they understand their own risks of hazards?

HACCP offers a rigorous perspective with which to look at a process, and to examine all of the places where it can go wrong. The safety system ultimately holds everything together because of its emphasis on scrupulous documentation. Every important step is written down, every time, and is always double-checked by a supervisor. It sounds like a lot of paperwork, but it is better viewed as an opportunity to enforce consistency and precision.

When you thoroughly document your process you’ll create a safer product, run a more efficient business, and make more money.

References

  1. Rough, L. (2016, March 4). Leafly’s State-by-State Guide to Cannabis Regulations. Retrieved from https://www.leafly.com/news/industry/leaflys-state-by-state-guide-to-cannabis-testing-regulations
  2. Jikomes, N. & Zoorob, M. (2018, March 14). The Cannabinoid Content of Legal Cannabis in Washington State Varies Systematically Across Testing Facilities and Popular Consumer Products. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22755-2
Production line, NiceLabel

Farm-to-Fork Transparency: How Digitized Labeling Can Prevent a Major Allergen Recall

By Lee Patty
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Production line, NiceLabel

For consumers and brands alike, the damaging impact of mislabeling or neglecting to clearly outline an allergen can be colossal. Therefore, to prevent a health and business disaster, best practices around allergen labeling must be top of mind. Luckily, technology can help, and the farm-to-fork transparency provided by a centralized and digitized modern label management system can ensure organizations improve responsiveness and accuracy while reducing costs beyond those saved by mitigating recalls.

No one wants to face a recall, but have you done enough to prevent one from happening to you? More than 650 food products were recalled last year in the United States alone. And one of the leading causes might just be the easiest to prevent: Undeclared allergens.

According to the Q2 2019 Stericycle Recall Index, undeclared allergens are the leading cause of U.S. food recalls, accounting for 48.4% of food recalls from the FDA and 62.9% of food pounds recalled by the USDA. This statistic becomes more alarming considering that roughly 11% of US adults have a food allergy, according to JAMA.

Enacted in 2004, the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act (FALCPA) stipulates that all packaged food regulated under the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act (FFD&C) comply by listing major food allergens. “Major allergens” refers to milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, and soybeans, and for nuts and shellfish, the species must be declared.

For brands, the damaging impact of mislabeling or neglecting to clearly outline an allergen can be colossal, resulting in costly recalls or litigation. However, the impact to consumers can be even greater when one small mistake can cause serious illness, or worse, death. To prevent a health and business nightmare, best practices around allergen labeling must be top of mind.

However, with constantly changing legislation, this can be easier said than done. For instance, in a move that outpaced the FDA, Illinois issued a state law requiring sesame labeling. And in the UK, Natasha’s Law was recently introduced, requiring companies to label all food ingredients on fresh pre-packaged food after 15-year-old Natasha Ednan-Laperouse died of a sesame allergy from a sandwich that didn’t list all the ingredients.

The need for optimal allergen labeling is clear, so how can organizations ensure allergens are clearly labeled on their products and meet existing standards while preparing for future requirements?

Though the underlying principle behind a clear label is simple, the process of designing such labels can be multifaceted and difficult to streamline—especially if labels are designed, printed and managed by separate users across a franchise or store network. And this challenge is multiplied further when products reach across international boundaries. But technology can help, and the farm-to-fork transparency provided by a centralized and digitized modern label management system can ensure organizations improve responsiveness and accuracy while reducing costs beyond those saved by mitigating recalls.

Disorganized Sprawl: A Major Hurdle to Effective Labeling

When implemented properly, modern label management can cost-effectively centralize labeling, reducing inefficiencies and human error. However, before this can happen, there are a few common roadblocks that may make standardizing the labeling process challenging.

One issue may be a sprawl of legacy equipment that is not integrated into a cohesive network. For instance, a legacy labeling system may only support certain label printers while certain manufacturers of direct marking equipment may only support their own propriety brand of printers. In another sense, a lack of standardization can also make it difficult to efficiently integrate labeling with other business solutions like manufacturing execution systems (MES) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

A damaging impact of sprawl is adoption of a wide range of different labeling applications across various facilities. This will result in inconsistent label formatting, the need to create the same label multiple times, and the need to accommodate different systems and printers. Consequences of this may be a lack of centralized storage when everything is saved locally, complex user training encompassing many software programs, an increased burden on IT, and a great deal of extra administration and human intervention to maintain and update labels.

Another problem with a disorganized ecosystem for labeling is that quality assurance inevitably suffers because tracing a label’s history or implementing standardized approval processes can be difficult or impossible. To accurately track labeling, it’s necessary to have a production log stating where and when labels were produced and who produced them. Having such a log and using it effectively requires centralization or else it can become difficult to track different versions or enforce universal approval processes for altering templates.

Implementing Modernized Labeling to Improve QA

Modern label management systems can help suppliers and manufacturers standardize and control marking packaging or label production across an entire organizational ecosystem. These solutions feature a central, web-based document management system and provide a reliable storage space for label templates and label history. This will enable changes and updates to be tracked centrally, so local facilities can access uniform and accurate templates to produce labels.

An ideal label management system can also interface with a multitude of direct marking and labeling printers, even if they are from different manufacturers, and it can integrate labeling and direct marking with a business system’s master data, which eliminates manual data entry errors. This decreases upfront capital expenditures in more costly efforts to standardize equipment, provides a system that is easy to integrate with partners, saves costs generated from having to discard product or rework labels, and increases a company’s ability to implement unified, organization-wide labeling processes.

Centralized Labeling is Easily Delivered Through Cloud

To many, the thought of migrating legacy labeling to a centralized system or investing a large sum of resources into centralizing labeling may seem inordinate or daunting. However, cloud technology makes migrating to a modern label management system feasible for organizations of all sizes.

With the cloud, designing labels and ensuring quality assurance becomes far more accessible. Additionally, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model doesn’t require the capital investments or operations and maintenance upkeep associated with costly IT infrastructure and is easily scalable depending on business needs. This is a game changer for small to medium sized businesses who can now benefit from a centralized labeling system because of the cloud.

The Benefits of a “Single-source-of-truth”

In addition to other benefits, integrating a modern label management solution with other business systems allows users to access a “single-source-of-truth.” This allows for enforceable, specific user roles with logins for each user as well as traceability and transparency across all factories that produce products. The traceability from being able to monitor a “single-source-of-truth” is a critical component to farm-to-fork transparency because it can provide an accurate production log overviewing label versions and changes, so companies can pinpoint the locations and causes of labeling inaccuracies and fix them instantly.

A modern label management system also enables organizations to nimbly respond to new regulatory requirements because alterations only need to be made in one location, new templates can be previewed before going to production, and nutrition and allergen functionality can be easily formatted so that it is clear and stands out to the consumer. This increases labeling consistency and accuracy, and saves time when rules change and when new products need to be incorporated during a merger or acquisition.

Futureproofing and Ensuring Consumer Safety with Allergen Labeling

In today’s world, food and beverage manufacturers must rise to the challenge of changing regulations while meeting the call of shifting customer demands and integrating themselves within greater business ecosystems and extended supply chains. In the case of allergen labeling, this may mean preparing labels for different countries, which have varying standards for labeling allergens like sesame, royal jelly, bee pollen, buckwheat and latex, or ensuring labels can be altered quickly when new products are rolled out or when bodies like the FDA revamp standards.

Companies that implement modern label management solutions position themselves to adapt to competition and regulations quickly, implement solutions that can easily be integrated with partners in a supply chain, and streamline quality control. This can help improve productivity, reduce labeling errors, increase collaboration, and prevent product recalls. But most importantly, it helps ensure the safety of consumers everywhere.

Vicky Waskiewicz
FST Soapbox

Food Safety Issues Don’t Occur In The QA Manager’s Office

By Vicky Waskiewicz
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Vicky Waskiewicz

Just like many jobs, a quality assurance manager starts out with high hopes of creating a real difference in their day-to-day work. But that vision quickly gets blocked by stacks of paperwork and other to-dos taking top priority. Soon, QA managers find themselves far from the floor and far from where the real work is happening, usually stuck behind a desk in an office.

While this may have become standard practice, that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing you can do to change this reality. And, the sooner you are able to do so the better, because we all know that the job of a QA manager, especially when it comes to food safety, is important, both to the company and to the public.

Why Food Safety Should Be At The Top Of A QA Manager’s Priority List

The roles and responsibilities of a QA manager are vast, which is why it’s so easy to get caught-up in tasks that keep you holed up in your office. But of all the duties you have, the one that shouldn’t get overlooked is food safety. Because food is consumed, and has the potential to endanger consumers if it’s not produced properly, it is capable of destroying a company’s reputation and their margins, not to mention people’s lives.

As a QA manager, you know this, but you might not be doing everything in your power to make sure the food your company is producing is safe.

How To Improve Food Safety

While you can do a lot from your office, you can’t know what’s happening on the floor without actually spending time there. You have to work closely with your employees to make sure they understand the importance of food safety and therefore the importance of their job.

Here are five ways you can begin to improve the level of food safety in your company.

  1. Work directly with the production floor. Make it a priority to get out of your office regularly to observe the practices that are being used. The more you talk directly with employees about food safety, the more they will understand why it’s important and the safety precautions they can take to ensure they are creating food that is safe.
  2. Demonstrate the importance of food safety. Consider setting up a meeting or talk that gives real life examples of people who have gotten sick or hurt from food that is produced with improper practices. Demonstrating the importance of things, like proper sanitation, can make individuals on the floor aware of the repercussions if they don’t follow the safety guidelines.
  3. Get employees involved in food safety. Spend time educating your employees on measures they can take to assure that the food they are producing is safe. Letting them hold each other accountable is a powerful way to make sure there are eyes on the floor even when you’re not there.
  4. Lead by example. When management walks out onto the production floor, all eyes are on them. Be sure that senior management is aware of the rules, handwashing, hair restraints, etc. and that they follow them every time they enter the production area. Teach employees to kindly remind them if they see them bypass one of the good manufacturing practices.
  5. Regularly change signage throughout the facility. The same old signage over time becomes part of the landscape and eventually the worker is blind to it. Take the time to change the signs, using different sizes, bold colors and positive messaging.

Becoming A Food Safety Hero

QA managers play crucial roles in companies, but without putting food safety at the top of their list, they’re overlooking one of their most important jobs. By learning about steps you can take to improve food safety, like the five mentioned above, you can become a food safety hero, protecting your company and its consumers.

Food Quality Alliance Provides a Total Management Solution

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The Global ID Group forms a consortium of proven leaders in food safety and quality working together to provide a single source of over 40 essential testing, training and certification services.

Whether it’s developing and testing new food products, ensuring compliance with expanding food safety and supply chain mandates, coordinating and hosting growing numbers of annual audits, or managing crucial client relationships, quality assurance (QA) managers in the food and beverage industry face rapidly escalating time and resource demands.

To help alleviate these mounting pressures, The Global ID Group has announced the formation of the Food Quality Alliance, a consortium of proven leaders in food safety and quality working together to provide a single source of over 40 essential testing, training and certification services. Launching in Q2 2015, the Alliance will provide QA teams with an integrated platform with which to centrally manage their growing array of responsibilities. The Alliance will offer products and services from the Global ID Group (CERT ID, Genetic ID and FoodChain ID) and its fellow founding members.

  • Through CERT ID, the Alliance will offer multiple food safety certification services (BRC, SQF, Global G.A.P., ISO 22000) and training programs.
  • Through Genetic ID, customers will gain access to a portfolio of pathogen, allergen, authenticity, speciation and GMO testing services.
  • FoodChain ID will offer consulting and advisory services on international non-GMO regulatory policies and help companies obtain Non-GMO Project Verification for products sold in North America, or Ohne Gentechnik and Danube Soy certification in the European Union.

Other alliance members include California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), leading organic certifier in the U.S; The Orthodox Union, world’s leading provider of kosher certification; and The Acheson Group LLC, global experts in managing operational, regulatory and reputational risks for the food industry along with crisis and recall management. The Alliance will also include laboratory partners providing a full array of chemical and nutritional testing services.

“As regulatory requirements and market demands on food companies continue to grow, QA departments often find themselves struggling to keep up with the rigors of compliance,” said Ron Stakland, Global ID Group vice president of business development. “From food safety to sustainability to specialized niches like gluten-free and kosher, much of the work for assuring safe and compliant food products and ingredients falls on the QA department. At the same time, the need to stay competitive and keep costs in check has never been greater. The purpose of the Alliance is to offer QA managers a simpler way to manage multiple services.”

To learn more about the Food Quality Alliance, visit www.foodqualityalliance.com.

Interview: FSQA Enabling Technologies as a Food Safety and Quality Assurance Game Changer

By Barbara Levin
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In an interview withFood Safety Tech, Barbara Levin, Senior Vice President and Co-Founder of SafetyChain Software, talks about FSQA Enabling Technologies – the Food Safety and Quality Assurance (FSQA) Game Changer, a series of leadership forums, tech talks and executive briefs that SafetyChain has launched this month.

Barbara-Levin2The focus of the series is how technology can help FSQA teams execute to meet today’s biggest food safety and quality challenges in program management, compliance, continuous improvement, risk mitigation and much more.

Food Safety Tech (FST): SafetyChain is launching a new series, called FSQA Enabling Technologies – the Food Safety and Quality Assurance Game Changer. What is the series about and what will it include?

Barbara Levin: For the past three years, working with thought leaders throughout the food and beverage industry, SafetyChain has helped educate and share insights on critical topics – such as FSMA and GFSI. In 2015, we’re excited to bring the conversation to the next level – to discuss the tools that are available to execute on challenges such as FSMA compliance, managing GFSI programs, risk management/brand protection, audit readiness, cost of quality, supplier compliance, operational KPI performance and much more.

FST: Why is technology an important topic in food safety today as we enter 2015?

Levin: I strongly believe that adoption of FSQA enabling technologies is vital, necessary and inevitable – and the only way food companies are going to be able to scale to meet all of the challenges ahead of them. And industry is realizing this and wants to learn more as technology adoption is becoming more mainstream. Think about the technologies we all use at work and home today – things like employee portals to view our paychecks, email, online banking, all of the apps on our computer tablets – none of us can imagine doing without them now. Well think about suppliers entering Certificate of Analysis info on portals. FSQA folks doing pre-harvest inspections on mobile app forms, getting safety and quality information in realtime to determine if there are non-conformances and CAPAs required. And there are hundreds of other examples. We think these will become a way of life too in food safety and quality. So we’re really excited to provide a forum for this FSQA technology conversation.

FST: What changes have we seen in Food Safety and Quality Assurance enabling technologies that are allowing them to achieve more widespread, mainstream adoption?

Levin: There’s a wrong perception that the food industry lags behind some other industries when it comes to technology adoption. In reality, food companies have automated a lot of their functions – look at finance, human resources, payroll systems, supply chain, purchasing, inventory and such. These functions were automated because it saved time, saved money and created operational efficiencies.

Where there was a lag was in adoption of FSQA technologies. I think that this was because first generation safety and quality technologies were behind the firewall – and as we know food safety and quality folks are not sitting at their desks looking at a computer all day. Instead, they are out in the field doing a pre-harvest inspections, or on the plant floor, or at the supplier site doing an audit, or with the customer… basically they are everywhere except at a desk. But today, there are many cloud-based, mobile food safety and quality technologies that can be accessed anywhere, at anytime – and this has really been a game changer when it comes to adoption. Now, food companies are deploying technologies and gaining the same advantages – saving time, saving money and creating efficiencies that improve FSQA.

FST: What are some of the triggers leading teams to explore technology for the first time?

Levin: The word “more” is key to this answer. FSQA is seeing more regulation (think FSMA), more third party schemes like GFSI to manage, more audits, more pressure to improve operational KPIs and reduce the cost of quality. The only thing there’s not more of usually is people – and so technology is the most efficient way to scale to do “more with less.” Additionally technology is the key to getting FSQA information in the fastest manner possible – for timely CAPAs – and be preventive vs. reactive in ensuring that non-compliant products do not go into commerce.

FST: Where do you see FSQA enabling technologies as having the biggest impact on safety and quality operations?

Levin: For me, FSQA enabling technology can have great impact in these areas:

  • Reducing risk for withdrawals, rejections and recalls;
  • Having real time and continuous information to generate CAPAs and ensure safe, quality food;
  • Managing supplier risk and supply chain controls;
  • Scalability to do more without having to add more people;
  • Being audit ready – for regulatory, GFSI, customer and internal audits all the time – even for unannounced audits;
  • Reducing the cost of quality; and
  • Having actionable data for meaningful continuous improvement.

All of these really come under one umbrella, which is protecting the brand and financial value of your company.

FST: What’s coming up in terms of topics and speakers during the series kickoff?

Levin: The series has three components – Leadership Forums on “big picture” topics, Tech Talks on specific FSQA issues and how technology helps resolve challenges associated with those issues, and executive brief whitepapers on the business side of technology benefits.

The first leadership forum, scheduled for March 13, will feature Bob Butcher, Ipswich Shellfish Company’s FSQA Group Operations Manager, and Jeff Chilton, President of Chilton Consulting Group, and will focus on The Business Case for Food Safety and Quality Technology. Future topics include the Role of Technology in Risk Mitigation and Brand Protection, and Technology as an Enabler to Reduce the Cost of Quality.

The FSQA Tech Talks kick off at the end of March with the following topics:

  • March 31 – Tackling FSMA Compliance: How Automation Enables HACCP-to-HARPC migration, FSMA Reporting, Supply Chain Controls and More
  • April 21 – Harmonizing FSQA – It’s All About the Cloud: How the Cloud and Mobile Technologies Enable Anywhere, Anytime FSQA Data Capture and CAPA Generation
  • May 19 – Facilitating Continuous Improvement: Enabling Actionable Data for Trending, Benchmarking and Reporting Across Your Entire Operation

The first executive brief is available now and is titled, “The Critical Role of FSQA Enabling Technologies for Today’s Food Safety and Quality Operations: Technology as an Enabler to Fundamentally Change How Food Safety & Quality Operations Manage Risk and Meet Key Performance Indicators.”

Additional details on the entire series – along with registration and download information – is available at www.safetychain.com/2015TechSeries.

FST: Who should attend this series, and how can they get more information?

Levin: Folks from Food Safety, Food Quality, Operations, Legal, Financial, Executive and Information Technology Management from all sectors of the food and beverage industry are encouraged to register and participate in the series. Everything is complimentary and new topics and dates will be announced frequently. We also invite FoodSafetyTech readers to let us know what topics they’d like to see – they can email us at info@safetychain.com.

How to Run an Audit-Ready Co-Pack Operation

By James Houghton
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If an auditor were to walk through your site today, would you be proud of its set-up and its ability to uphold quality and regulatory standards for yourself and your client?

I think many of us have once been – or are still – in a state of scurrying around right before an auditor knocks on our front doors. When you’re small and growing quickly, it’s hard not to be reactive for things like regulatory audits. But at some point, you have to proactively build out repeatable processes to drive long-term growth, and start really taking control of your own operation.

Here’s the ideal:

You want your co-pack operation to be in a state of audit-readiness. That is, if an auditor were to walk through your site today, you’d be proud of its set-up and its ability to uphold quality and regulatory standards for yourself and your client.

Earlier in October, I presented a webinar on “How to Run an Audit-Ready Co-Pack Operation,” i.e., how to get your house in order. Here are the five pillars of maintaining a state of audit-readiness for your co-pack operation:

Culture

In the same way that you have built a culture of collaboration and client satisfaction you’ll also need to build one for Quality. The way you prioritize and permeate Quality initiatives throughout the organization, from your senior team to your shop floor staff, will show when the auditor walks through the doors.

Paperwork

It’s vitally important that your paperwork is in order, including your SOPs, transactional items like RFQs, POs, and SOWs, and most importantly, the batch record. The auditor will be looking for two things amongst all of your documentation: content and consistency. The content needs to meet regulatory requirements, and there needs to be consistency between what you say you do and what you actually do.

It’s not rocket science: you need to write out what you do, and then you have to do the activities that reflect what you’ve written down. This is often the one thing that won’t be maintained properly, unless it’s given attention.

Physical Space

Your physical space will be audited to ensure it’s set up with the correct flow, that it is kept clean, and there is documentation to that effect.

To make sure your physical space is up to par for an audit, imagine that you yourself are the product… go back to your receiving doors and physically walk through your facility, as a “day in the life” of your product. You’ll be able to see where you go, how you are handled, and where each step is documented. Along the way, anything that’s not delineated, not treated or identified properly, or does not follow a logical flow, are the areas you need to lock down before an audit.

Material Control

An auditor will want to see that you’re in control of your materials, and that you have track and traceability. Being able to track where you’re storing things in the site, where it’s moving, what your processes are for moving inventory, etc… all that demonstrates that you have the traceability controls to be able to handle mock and real recalls and maintain consumer safety.

Production

Ahh… the production line. It’s where the magic happens. When setting up your production line, you need to make sure you have appropriate line clearance, the lines are segregated, the correct staff are on the line to do the project, and that they have had the proper training for their particular activity in the line. In the co-pack world, where things are highly customized with low repeatability, it can be easy to overlook the extensive amount of training it takes to make sure each production line is in good hands. You need, however, to make sure you do your due diligence to maintain production accuracy, quality assurance, and regulatory standards.

In the webinar, I discuss each of these areas in greater detail. If maintaining a state of audit-readiness is an endeavor you’d like to pursue, watch the webinar for more details or access the slide deck by clicking here. 

Purnendu C. Vasavada, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus at University of Wisconsin

What Should You Know About Food Safety Testing?

By Sangita Viswanathan
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Purnendu C. Vasavada, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus at University of Wisconsin

Food safety is in the news. Recent food industry, regulatory and consumer trends stress proactive, systematic and preventive approach to food safety by managing food hazards and risks. Testing for food safety hazards, particularly microbial hazards and allergens throughout the food production and processing chain is becoming increasingly important in assuring food safety. Food testing is also becoming important for detection of adulteration.

In next week’s Food Safety Consortium to be held in Schaumburg, IL, Purnendu C. Vasavada, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus at University of Wisconsin, River Falls, and President of PCV & Associates, LLC, will discuss trends in the food safety testing market and approaches for testing of food and food plant environment, emphasizing microbial and other significant food hazards. In this article, PC, as he is popularly referred to, gives a sneak-peek into his presentation.

Food Safety Tech (FST): You will be speaking about the Food Testing Market – what are some broad trends that you are seeing?

PC: Food Microbiology testing is increasing worldwide but majority of testing is still dealing with food quality assurance and ingredient and product testing. Testing for pathogens seem to be driven by regulatory requirement. According to recent market reports, 76 percent of test volume in North America is for routine microbiology. In the EU and Asia, routine microbiology accounts for 81 percent and 72 percent of test volume, respectively.

Most pathogen testing is for Salmonella, E. Coli 057:H7 and Stex, Listeria and as L. monocytogenes. There is an increasing interest in testing for Campylobacter.

Testing of in-process and environmental samples is more common in NA and Europe. In Asia in-process/environmental testing only accounts for 9 percent of total test volume.

FST: In your presentation at the Consortium, what will you talk about FSMA and its impact on food safety testing?

PC: I plan to include a brief discussion on testing as related to monitoring and verification of Preventive Controls.

FST: Where is food safety testing headed, and what should food safety managers keep in mind?

PC: Given the emphasis on supply chain management and process control to manage identified hazards in preventive mode, food safety managers should understand testing internal and external testing requirements and complexity of sampling, testing tools and approaches not simply focus on cost aspects. Even if testing is outsourced, becoming familiar with various methods and testing tools will be necessary.

FST: Who should attend your presentation and why?

PC: Plant managers, quality assurance supervisors, marketing managers, food safety testing methods, equipment and service providers as well as anyone interested in food safety testing would find this presentation very useful and relevant to their day-to-day activities.

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