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Latest issue / 4 January 2012 / John Holah and Edyta Margas, Campden BRI and Robert Hagburg, Benjamin Warren, Judy Fraser-Heaps and Sara Mortimore, Land O’Lakes
This article introduces concepts and ideas about the nature and potential control of microbiological cross-contamination in a food manufacturing environment. The concepts and opinions shared do not necessarily represent the policies and/or programs used by the companies represented by the authors.
Microbiological cross-contamination has been a contributing factor to several well-documented outbreaks of foodborne illness1,2. In most HACCP or other hazard analysis-based food safety systems, cross contamination is controlled and managed predominately by prerequisite programs (PRPs). PRPs can be defined as the measures that provide the basic environmental and operating conditions in a food operation that are necessary for the production of safe and wholesome foods3, such as cleaning and disinfection and personnel hygiene. The implementation of an appropriate PRP is also seen as the foundation on which a good HACCP plan is built and there are many examples of best practice to follow for each prerequisite (PR) at an international level4, via retailers requirements5 or from recognised food research bodies6-8 or trade associations9,10.
There is little information, however, on how to align the use of specific PRs to control actual routes of cross-contamination in food pro – cessing plants. (more…)
Latest issue / 4 January 2012 / John Hammond, Head of Information & Legislation, Campden BRI
Food legislation is highly complex and impacts on all aspects of the food industry from production, packaging to distribution and marketing. Food laws are a vital element in industrialised and developing countries alike, ensuring the food that consumers purchase and eat is safe and has been marketed honestly.
It is the role of government and its agencies to protect the population from both harm and unfair practices. This is achieved through properly enforced food control measures based on comprehensive, well-defined regulation covering the quality and safety of food and its transparent and honest presentation to the consumer.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations and World Health Organisation1, food control is defined as:
“A mandatory regulatory activity of enforce – ment by national or local authorities to provide consumer protection and ensure that all foods during production, handling, storage, processing and distribution are safe, wholesome and fit for human consumption; conform to safety and quality requirements; and are honestly and accurately labelled as prescribed by law.” (more…)
Issue 5 2011 / 1 November 2011 / Catherine O’Shaughnessy, Gordon Jackson, Jessica Leclaire and Karin Pawlowsky, Campden BRI
Campden BRI’s instrument assessment service and instrument comparison website enable staff within the food and drink industries keep up-to date with new and forthcoming instruments. The services save users time, money and effort on obtaining information and provides assessment reports that are unavailable elsewhere.
New instruments are being developed all the time for the testing of food and drink and therefore it is difficult for staff within these industries to know whether a particular instrument will fulfil their requirements. Having an instrument evaluated can be costly part of doing business, as each client may request different features as part of the evaluation process. Campden BRI’s new instrument assessment service can help keep these costs down by providing an independent evaluation of new and existing equipment. The performance of new instruments is compared against existing techniques. Instruments are also assessed on their suitability for use, including ease of use, robustness and ease of cleaning. The scope of any evaluation is viewed in advance by advisors in the food and drinks industries, thus ensuring that the assessment meets the needs of the industry. The work is carried out at Campden BRI by trained, experienced staff. Once completed, the assessment report can with permission from the client be publicised on the Campden BRI Instruments website (www.compareinstruments.com) and/or in the food and drinks press. Some of the instrument assessments which have been undertaken are summarised in this article. (more…)
Industry news, News / 12 August 2011 / Trailblazer PR
For over 40 years, Campden BRI’s ‘Food Law Notes’ has provided thousands of readers with detailed information about the UK and European legislation controlling food production and marketing via several hundred pages in printed book format. Now for the first time ever, subscribers will have access to a new electronic version, known as Electronic Food Law Notes or eFLaN.
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Issue 3 2011 / 7 July 2011 / Paul Catterall, Bakery Technology Manager, Campden BRI
Rules. We all need rules to exist in our complicated lives. Speed limits are a good example. Very important, they keep us safe on the roads. But we all have our own version of rules: in a 70 mph limit, it’s okay for me to drive at 74 mph, but it’s totally unacceptable for someone to overtake me at 80 mph, that’s just irresponsible and unsafe! Rules are great – for other people.
And so it is for baking, we have rules. Rules that define what products are. Recipe balance rules for cakes that give an indication of what ingredients work and what don’t. The problem with rules is that they try to be definitive but are rarely written accurately enough to satisfy every eventuality, so inevitably they will require interpretation. As users of rules, we start to look for ways of skirting round them or interpreting them in very lax ways. In effect, rules have always been designed to be broken! (more…)
Industry news, News / 27 June 2011 / Campden BRI
Dr Roy Betts, Head of the Department of Microbiology at Campden BRI, was one of four people recently appointed to the Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food by Lord Jeff Rooker, Chair of the Food Standards Agency.
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Industry news, News / 24 June 2011 / Food Standards Agency
Lord Jeff Rooker, the Chair of the Food Standards Agency, has announced four new appointments to the Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food (ACMSF).
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Industry news, News / 23 June 2011 / Campden BRI
Professor Colin Dennis, former Director-General of Campden BRI, received the Myron Solberg Award at the annual conference of the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) in New Orleans last week. This award “honors an IFT member for providing leadership in the establishment and successful development and continuation of industry/government/academia cooperative organization.” (more…)
Issue 2 2011 / 13 May 2011 / Emma Hanby, Innovation Advisor, Campden BRI
Food packaging is core to managing the delivery of innovative, safe products to the consumer. The consumer has an increasing awareness of the impact of packaging on the environment. With the advent of the Courtauld Commitment to reduce the amount of packaging materials being sent to landfill, an increasing number of companies are exploring routes to lightweight material or are using alternative materials. The Courtauld Commitment is a voluntary agreement between major UK supermarkets and the Waste and Resources Action programme (WRAP). It aims to reduce household waste by achieving reductions in packaging waste growth and identify solutions to reduce food waste.
In 2010, we saw Asda trial reusable packaging for fabric conditioner, Sainsbury’s move from cans to combibloc cartons for its Basics range of canned tomatoes, Nestle remove plastic inserts from Easter Egg packaging, Stella Artois launch a lightweight glass bottle and Waitrose use flow wrap packs for minced beef. We also saw the move to wine in pouches and PET bottles, cereal without cartons and milk in bags. (more…)
Issue 6 2010 / 15 December 2010 / Sarab Sahi, Principal Research Officer, Baking & Cereal Processing Department, Campden BRI
Enzymes are widely used in the cereals industry to improve processing performance1 and product quality in a range of food products. Industrial baking in particular uses microbial enzymes as processing aids to improve dough properties as well as to improve product quality and shelf-life, and is an area where there is strong growth. Campden BRI is particularly interested in enzymes that have been developed to improve the baking process. Examples of enzymes investigated in research programmes have included xylanases, lipases, amylases, proteases and a number of oxidases. In this respect, Campden BRI plays an important role for its industrial member companies and the wider industry in evaluating the functional improvements from adding enzymes. There is usually only a limited amount of information available in the literature about the effects of these enzymes and it is not possible to deduce from published sources whether this is applicable across all bakery products or how they should be used most effectively. (more…)
Issue 5 2010 / 5 November 2010 / Alicja Malinowska & John Holah, Campden BRI
To meet retailer, customer and consumer expectations, there are increasing demands within the food industry for higher standards of microorganism control in food production environments. Traditional approaches such as cleaning and disinfection regimes have been targeting specific sites within the processing environment to control contamination. Such sites might include food production equipment, where much of the rest of the processing area is not routinely decontaminated.
To sustain day-to-day control of pathogens, this targeted cleaning and disinfection approach is adequate, but does not eliminate all microorganisms. Previous research at Campden BRI has demonstrated that microbial strains, including pathogens, can become persistent in food factories and survive for several years1,2. (more…)
Issue 5 2010 / 4 November 2010 / Edyta Margas & John Holah, Campden BRI and Alexander Milanov & Lilia Ahrné, SIK
The hygienic design of food processing equipment is a critical factor in determining the quality and safety of foods produced. It involves the selection of suitable materials of construction, their fabrication into a functional piece of equipment, the ability of constructed equipment to produce food hygienically and the maintenance of hygienic conditions throughout the equipment’s working life. There is a significant amount of guidance and information available on the principles of hygienic design for traditional food processing equipment (from the European Hygienic Engineering Design Group; www.EHEDG.org), but the nature of NP techniques such as High Pressure Processing (HPP) and Pulsed Electric Field (PEF) may impose other additional stresses on the equipment surfaces, their construction materials and their fabrication. (more…)
Issue 2 2010 / 12 May 2010 / Dr. Mike Edwards, Microscopy Section, Campden BRI
Consumer complaints regarding foreign bodies are a constant problem for virtually all food companies, and so their prevention and control should be high on the list for all Quality and Technical Managers. The effective management of prevention and control of foreign bodies requires attention to many parts of the business, including recruitment and training, sourcing of raw materials and packaging, factory design and the selection and installation of manufacturing equipment among others – and all this is before we have even considered items like metal detectors to detect and remove foreign bodies. (more…)
Past issues / 7 May 2010 /
This issue features the latest industry news and forward looking articles including:
- Managing Food Allergens
Helen Arrowsmith, Biochemistry Section, Campden BRI - Show Preview – Rapid microbiological methods: seminar and exhibition
Past issues / 7 March 2010 /
In this issue:
- Exploring the relation between nutrient bio-accessibility and the structural quality of tissue based food systems
Lien Lemmens, Sandy Van Buggenhout, Indrawati Oey, Ann Van Loey & Marc Hendrickx, Laboratory of Food Technology and Leuven Food Science and Nutrition Research Centre (LFoRCe), Department of Microbial and Molecular Systems (more…)
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