| How do parents make life safer and healthier for their kids? One of the ways is to impose limits on things like roaming distance within the neighborhood, curfews, and insisting that you eat your vegetables. Just common sense, right? Let’s take a look at some more of it.
Limits are also necessary within the food manufacturing industry. Let’s take a look at Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) Principle No. 3 to see how they’re established and why. Principle 3: Establish critical limits for each critical control point. – You can think of a critical limit as a boundary of safety for each critical control point (CCP). So how do you determine that boundary of safety? It’s difficult to generalize, but if you’ve ever watched the TV show Hoarders, you have an excellent example of one that has not only been breeched, but torn asunder. In order to prevent things in the commercial food industry from getting anywhere near Hoarders bad, maximum and minimum values are set in place, representing safeguards to physical, biological, and chemical parameters at play within the industry. Critical limits can be obtained from regulatory standards and guidelines, scientific literature, experimental studies, as well as information provided by consultants. These critical limits come into play with issues as varied as machine design, raw material temperatures, and overall safe processing times. How could the hoarders let things get so bad? If you listen carefully, you’ll hear bits of information that provide a clue. They’ll say it started with a few things falling to the floor which they didn’t feel like picking up and it escalated from there. Now all of us live within environments which differ as to their cleanliness, but by and large we live within space where we feel comfortable and consider to be reasonably clean. We don’t all habitually move stoves and refrigerators to clean, for example. But if we were so inclined, refrigerators do come with front access panels that are easily removed. Trouble is the space they provide access to often isn’t large enough to accommodate hands and a vacuum cleaner nozzle comfortably. You can imagine how frustrating and potentially dangerous it would be to public health to have commercial machinery that provided such limited access for cleaning. To cope with this problem design engineers institute minimum and maximum parameters, such as in the critical limit dimensions of a removable cover. Their guideline would ensure that enough space is provided so that personnel can fully access all aspects of machinery with tools for cleaning. That same cover can also have established maximum critical limits, so that dimensions aren’t too large and heavy to be manipulated by hand. Human nature being what it is, something that is too difficult to remove may be “forgotten” and parts of the machine may never get cleaned. Raw meats and many produce can contain hazards like salmonella, E. coli, and other nasty critters that are dangerous to human health. One of the ways the commercial food industry works to ensure that these contaminants aren’t unleashed on the public is to install programmable control systems into processing machinery that essentially cooks the meat at an established minimum temperature for a minimum amount of time. Utilizing this type of temperature control in conjunction with an established maximum cooking parameter for temperature and time will virtually eliminate the possibility of overcooked or burnt food products. When you buy that frozen dinner in most cases it’s completely cooked, but it’s a rarity to find it’s been burned. Another situation in which critical limits are utilized is in the maintenance of machinery, such as when they limit the number of hours a machine can be operated before it is shut down for servicing. Next week we’ll move on to Principle No. 4 and see how it establishes monitoring requirements for each CCP. ____________________________________________
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Posts Tagged ‘food processing machinery’
Food Manufacturing Challenges – HACCP Design Principle No. 3
Sunday, October 30th, 2011
Food Manufacturing Challenges – Avoiding Contamination
Sunday, October 9th, 2011| Perhaps you’ve heard of the non-reciprocal wine and sewage principle. I’m not sure where it originated, but it states that if you add a cup of wine to a barrel of sewage, you still get a barrel of sewage. No brainer, right? Well, consider the flip side. If you add a cup of sewage to a barrel of wine, you also get nothing more than a barrel of sewage. In other words, a small amount of contamination goes a long way.
The premise of this principle also applies within the food manufacturing industry. If you were to add uncontaminated food to garbage, you would just get more garbage, and if you add garbage to food… well, you get it. The term garbage can encompass an endless variety of contaminants, such as broken glass, metal shavings, nuts, bolts, plastic fibers, grease, broken machine parts, errant human body parts, and on and on. Although the FDA does allow for certain levels of natural contaminants, like insect parts and rodent hairs, consumers are never pleased when undesirable elements enter their food supply. It could even be dangerous. When design engineers create food processing machinery and production lines, they must be on the lookout for potential risks of contamination hazards. They must also provide a quick means of mitigation, before contaminants can enter into commercial production. A systematic approach provides the best means of addressing these needs, allowing for a pre-emptive method to ensure food safety. Checklists and procedural policy set in place for these reasons will enable design engineers to identify, assess, and control risks before they turn into hazards. This is where Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) planning comes in. To address these needs, the FDA has set up the HACCP (pronounced, “hass-up”) system, defined as “…a management system in which food safety is addressed through the analysis and control of biological, chemical, and physical hazards from raw material production, procurement and handling, to manufacturing, distribution and consumption of the finished product.” HACCP is the outgrowth of FDA current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP), which are set out in the Code of Federal Regulations pertaining to commercial food processors and manufacturers, Title 21, Part 110, entitled, “current Good Manufacturing Practice in Manufacturing, Packing or Holding Human Food.” Every commercial food processor, regardless of size, must implement a cGMP/HACCP quality assurance program to comply with these regulations. HACCP is a proactive strategy where hazards are identified, assessed, and then control measures developed to prevent, reduce, or eliminate potential hazards. A key element of HACCP involves prevention of food contamination during all phases of manufacturing, and way before the finished food product undergoes quality inspection. This strategy extends into the food manufacturing equipment and production line design process as well. Next time we’ll continue our look at HACCP and how its seven principles are used by design engineers to prevent food product contamination.
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Food Manufacturing Challenges – Cleanliness
Monday, October 3rd, 2011| My wife and I have an agreement concerning the kitchen. She cooks, I clean. Plates and utensils are easy enough to deal with, especially when you have a dishwasher. Pots and pans are a little more challenging. But what I hate the most are the food processors, mixers, blenders, slicers and dicers. They’re designed to make food preparation easier and less time consuming, but they sure don’t make the clean up any easier! Quite frankly, I suspect the time involved to clean them exceeds the time saved in food preparation.
Food processors on a larger scale are also used to manufacture many food products in manufacturing facilities, and being larger and more complicated overall, they’re even more difficult to clean. For example, I once designed a production line incorporating a dough mixer for one of the largest wholesale bakery product suppliers in the United States. A small elevator was required to lift vast amounts of ingredients into a mixing bowl the size of a compact car. Its mixing arms were so heavy, two people were required to lift them into position. It was also my task to ensure that the equipment as designed was capable of being thoroughly cleaned in a timely and cost effective manner. Food processing machinery must be designed so that all areas coming into contact with ingredients can be readily accessed for cleaning. And since most of the equipment you are dealing with in this setting is far too cumbersome to be portable, the majority of the cleaning must be cleaned in place, known in the industry as CIP. To facilitate CIP, commercial machinery is designed with hatches and special covers that allow workers to get inside with their cleaning equipment. Small, portable parts of the machine, such as pipes, cutting blades, forming mechanisms, and extrusion dies, are often made to be removable so that they can be carried over to an industrial sized sink for cleaning out of place, or COP. These potable machine components are typically removable for COP without the use of any tools and are fitted with flip latches, spring clips, and thumb screws to facilitate the process. Everything in a food manufacturing facility, from production machinery to conveyor belts, is typically cleaned with hot, pressurized water. The water is ejected from the nozzle end of a hose hooked up to a specially designed valve that mixes steam and cold water. The result is scalding hot pressurized water that easily dislodges food residues. Bacteria doesn’t stand a chance against this barrage. The water, which is maintained at about 180°F, quickly sterilizes everything it makes contact with. It also provides a chemical-free clean that won’t leave behind residues. Once dislodged, debris is flushed out through strategically placed openings in the machine which then empty into nearby floor drains. As a consequence of the frequent cleanings commercial food preparation machinery requires, their parts must be able to withstand frequent exposure to high pressure water streams. Parts are typically constructed of ultra high molecular weight (UHMW) food-grade plastics and metal alloys such as stainless steels, capable of withstanding the corrosive effects of water. And since water and electricity make a dangerous combination, gaskets and seals on the equipment must be tight enough to protect against water making its way into motors and other electrical parts. Next time we’ll look at how design engineers of food manufacturing equipment use a systematic approach to minimize the possibility of food safety hazards, such as product contamination. ____________________________________________
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Food Manufacturing Challenges – Look and Taste
Sunday, September 25th, 2011| Ever wonder why the burger you get at your favorite fast food chain never looks like the one on TV? The bun isn’t fluffy, the beef patty doesn’t make it to the edges, and the lettuce is anything but crisp. Well, it’s because a professional known as a Food Stylist, working together with a professional marketing firm and production crew, has painstakingly created the beautiful, bright and balanced burger used to lure you in. The process can take days or even weeks to create and has nothing to do with reality. The burger you’re really going to get will look more like a gorilla sat on it.
Many of the same issues must be dealt with when mass producing food. Chances are human hands will never even touch the product, like they did when creating the prototype in the test kitchen. In the world of food manufacturing, the “look” part can be extremely challenging. How do you get machines and production lines to create visually appealing food that entices prospective buyers to make an investment in it? How do you get it to taste good, or at least acceptable to the palate? The “taste” part of food manufacturing can be even more challenging. For example, in the test kitchen of a pastry product manufacturer, a recipe will be developed using home pantry products like flour, butter, and eggs. Ever made bread or a pie crust? The stickiness factor is enough to drive many insane. Even nimble human fingers have a hard time dealing with it. Now enter food processing machinery and conveyor belts into the scenario. This brings the possibility of stickiness to a whole new level. Huge messes that gum up the machinery are common, and production line shutdowns are the result. When faced with these challenges, plant engineers have to work closely with chefs in the R&D kitchen to come up with some sort of compromise in the recipe or final form of the food product. The goal is to cost effectively produce food products acceptable to consumers for purchase, and it’s often an iterative process involving many successive changes to recipes and equipment designs, coupled with a lot of testing and retesting, before success is finally met. If testing ultimately proves that the product appeals to consumers’ tastes and flows nicely through production lines, then there’s a good chance it will be a commercial success. In any case, cost is the dictating factor as to whether the food product will successfully make it onto the shelves of your supermarket. A margin of profit must be made. But this success is only part of the design process. Before full commercial production can commence, processing equipment and production lines must be designed so that they:
Next time we’ll explore how cleanliness requirements factor into food manufacturing equipment design. ____________________________________________
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