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Assessing risk to reduce product contamination

24 February 2022

John Teasdale offers some best-practice advice on carrying out thorough risk assessments to reduce the potential for product contamination during processing. 

As many Food Processing readers will know, the primary phase of monitoring and recording hygiene compliance, or any compliance for that matter, is to first assess the environment. In this case, that means carrying out a thorough risk assessment to highlight and document all potential risk areas. This could be where machinery is at risk of wear and therefore could become a foreign body contaminant, or a food preparation item which comes into direct contact with a food product, which will therefore need to be food contact approved at the very least, and so on. 

Once a full and thorough risk assessment has been completed – taking into account the worst-case scenarios – the next step is to implement products and machinery which fit within the HACCP procedures (gained from your assessment). This would include acquiring high quality products which are less likely to wear or break before their time and once they have reached the end of their life will not shatter and become a foreign body contaminant. If an item were to accidentally fall into a heavy duty piece of machinery, you would want said item to remain as intact as possible so that the larger pieces will be easily detectable and the contaminated product can be easily removed from production. In implementing extensively tested, high quality products into production areas, an organisation is actively working towards a safer environment for workers and product for consumers. 

The common way to assess standard and hygiene compliance would be to incorporate inspection systems into the production lines at critical points as well as the end of the line. This includes x-ray systems and metal detectors, to detect anomalies in product standard, and also to detect contaminants such as foreign body matter. 

It goes without saying then that the perfect accompaniment for any inspection system will be detectable products. Implementing a range of detectable products into every area of the production line would greatly increase the chance of detecting any foreign body contaminations. In recent years it is also becoming more prevalent in health and safety rules and guidelines – such as those outlined in BRC Issue 8 – to feature detectable products in certain areas of the work environment. For example,  Clause 4.9. 6.2 states ‘Pens used in open product areas shall be controlled to minimise risk of physical contamination (e.g. designed without small parts and detectable by foreign body detection equipment)’. 

In addition to offering a wide range of detectable products for use in the food processing environment, BST Detectable Products also provides traceability services to keep track of important information for each individual item and product. Detectable loop tags, which can be bespoke printed and colour coded, can be used to make it clear when there are allergy concerns, or make it easier to visibly identify hazard zones which can be ideal for production areas. Other BST products –such as pens, scoops, scrapers etc are colour coded to fit in a company’s colour coding across different areas. Additionally, current numbering and/or coding can be applied to almost anything made of plastic or stainless steel. These features make it easy to keep track of what items are assigned where and also aid in recalling each individual item so you will immediately know if something is missing and in what area, under whose responsibility. 

According to the Food Standards Agency UK, from January 2021 to January 2022 there were at least 22 products recalls involving metal, plastic, or rubber contamination. Undertaking a thorough risk assessment can help reduce the risk of adding to this figure. 

John Teasdale is managing director at BST Detectable products.


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