The Monitor

In 2016, food recalls surged 22% to 764, with many tied to the dairy industry. Contaminated dairy products can be linked to consumer illness, with the potential to permanently damage a dairy’s brand. How can milk and milk ingredient processors turn the tide, while complying with new and expanding regulations? Automatic sampling can help ensure that milk, cheese, yogurt and ice cream producers not only comply with the latest regulations, but also avoid harmful and expensive recalls that can lead to brand damage – or worse.

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Topics: Food & Beverage

Expanding regulations. Foodborne illness outbreaks and product recalls. Intensifying demand for food and beverage safety. The challenges in food and beverage production are growing more intense every year. How can you keep up?

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Topics: Food & Beverage

A flour mill operations manager often starts the day by checking processing data in the lab where product samples are tested to assess the mill’s performance and check for any issues such as contamination.

Proper flour sampling can make or break quality control analysis in a flour milling operation. A quality control test is only as good as the tested sample, which is only as good as the flour sampling technique used to obtain a true representative sample that has the characteristics of the whole lot or batch that’s tested.

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Topics: Food & Beverage, Solids & Powder

Just as trusted ingredients are critical to a food production operation; automated sampling is a critical part of any ingredient manufacturer’s processes. A nutrition and health food ingredient supplier to the food, beverage and dietary supplement industries needed to analyze representative samples of its product: polydextrose, which is a sweetener ingredient used in bakery products, beverages and baby food.

This food supplier’s customers requested it use modern biological contamination sampling techniques of its product to ensure quality.

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Topics: Food & Beverage

In the food industry, aseptic equipment is vital to ensure food safety. That equipment includes aseptic samplers. These are used by quality control personnel to easily and safely sample liquids from closed systems such as food and beverage process lines and vessels. 

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Topics: Food & Beverage

This article originally appeared in the Spring issue of the Packaging + Processing OEM published by The Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies. It has been republished below for our readers like yourself!

As low-moisture food producers seek to meet new sanitation standards, they are looking to machinery advances to improve food safety and minimize the risk of recalls. The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) requirement for sanitary equipment design poses a challenge for many processors in this market.

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Topics: Food & Beverage

Cleaning sampling equipment used in food production is very important. Food producers need to have confidence that their automated samplers are cleaned and maintained properly to eliminate contamination and potential recalls and their associated costs. Thorough cleaning and sanitizing of food-handling machines, and equipment, including food and beverage samplers is a requirement of a robust hazard analysis and critical control points (HACCP) plan.

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Topics: Food & Beverage

In recent years, purchasing food product recall and contamination insurance has become more common as food producers seek to reduce their risk. It’s become more prevalent as companies stop self-insuring due to the serious potential financial and brand consequences of recalls. Even large food producers are considering recall liability insurance as they face potential lost revenue from a costly recall. For small companies, a recall can put them out of business.

Yet, many food producers may still be missing the relationship between representative sampling at various stages throughout the production process and their liability insurance rates.

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Topics: Food & Beverage

This article contains excerpts from an article that originally appeared on FoodProcessing.com. It has been republished below for our readers like yourself!

Thorough cleaning and sanitizing of food-handling machines and equipment is a requirement, but the task becomes easier and faster when upfront consideration is given to sanitary design.

With implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) under way, sanitary design migrated from a nice-to-have to a must-have for the processing and handling equipment inside food & beverage manufacturing facilities.

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Topics: Food & Beverage

Peanut and tree nut allergies are two of the top eight most common food allergies. The other six are milk, eggs, soy beans, fish, shellfish, wheat and corn. Allergies to peanuts are generally a life-long condition, with only about 20 percent of people with the allergy ever receiving a remedy. In addition, up to 40 percent of people with peanut allergies are also allergic to tree nuts.

An allergic reaction can occur just by touching a surface with a trace amount of peanut butter and then touching one’s eye. Some of the serious reactions can be deadly; therefore, identifying an allergen such as peanuts or tree nuts in food processing is vital to protecting consumers. The challenge in controlling allergens such as peanuts and tree nuts involves the entire process at a food production plant. Identifying the allergens means using preventative measures to detect them, particularly when producing products with allergen sources such as nuts.

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Topics: Food & Beverage