In recent years, several severe, high-profile foodborne illness outbreaks have led to increased implementation of the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) system, along with other food safety programs and increased reliance on third-party auditing programs. These changes make hygienic standards essential to safe food and beverage production.

The ever-changing regulations can impact your sampling program. That’s why many food and beverage producers are investing in hygienic sampling equipment to mitigate the risks of pathogens while simplifying their sampling programs.

Food Safety Through Hygienic Equipment

“Hygienic” and “food-safe” is an agreed-upon standard by 3-A Sanitary Standards Inc. (3-A SSI), the European Hygienic Engineering and Design Group (EHEDG), and the FDA to confirm that a material is safe to pass through sampling equipment.

• The 3-A SSI certification helps protect food from contamination and ensures all product contact surfaces can be mechanically cleaned and easily dismantled for manual cleaning or inspection.
• EHEDG is a recognized set of 42 guidelines for sanitary equipment design in Europe that promotes and improves hygienic engineering and design in all aspects of food manufacture.

These hygienic sampling standards impact all areas of food and beverage processes. Yet, as the industry moves to execute food safety programs, facilities also need to implement clean design features within their equipment. If sampling equipment is not considered hygienic, it impacts the analytical results, the validity of the test and can cause cross-contamination within your processes.

Improved hygienic design for sampling equipment helps improve the cleanability of equipment while decreasing the risk of biological (pathogens), physical and chemical (e.g., allergens) contamination.

Representative Sampling Helps Meet Hygienic Standards

Representative sampling captures a limited volume of material that accurately reflects the characteristics of the entire lot, batch or process stream. It uses indirect methods to virtually eliminate direct sampling method problems such as imprecision error, sample bias and contamination.

The more accurate your sample is, the more representative it is – and the easier it is to achieve regulatory compliance. It also offers the latest hygienic equipment that can help your facility meet regulatory legislation and guidelines.

• Reliable – Representative automatic sampling is reliable, from validation of raw ingredients to quality testing at each key processing stage. It is the only way to ensure confidence in food testing results.
• Accurate – For the most dependable ingredient analysis and traceability, automatic representative sampling offers a repeatable method providing a more precise, efficient way to sample versus inherently bias scoop/pull methods.
• Verified – In-process ingredient blend management systems could be enhanced by automatic sampling to verify that ingredients are blended at appropriate ratios.
• Traceable– Tracking and verifying ingredients from farm to final products throughout the supply chain requires a statistically sound sampling plan. A product tracing plan can help automate the documentation of the production and distribution chain of products and allow for the efficient collection of data required by the FSMA. Automatic sampling makes executing product sampling and tracing plans more manageable and more efficient with automated and accurate data documentation.

An automatic sampling solution can more than pay for its installation by preventing costly recalls and enhancing compliance.

Sentry Equipment offers a range of food and beverage samplers that meet food-grade standards and 3-A/EHEDG requirements – giving you the peace of mind that your processes are running as expected.

Contact us at +1-262-567-7256, or complete our online contact form for more information.