Physical Hazard Management A Must for Food Manufacturers

The biggest reason for buying packaged food by any consumer is ‘to have safe experience ‘ and if there happens to be anything which is not expected in the pack, there will be increase in the risk of consumer dissatisfaction, regulatory risk and at the end it may damage the Brand Image.

- Anurag Mishra

This may lead to recall of the product and there are many examples available in the market. Food recall can happen due to a variety of reasons, including the detection of physical hazard in food products.

Foreign matter or Physical hazard is any physical stuff which is not expected by consumer in the pack or anything other than declared by the manufacturer on the label; glass, wood, metal part, plastics, rubber, threads, stone etc comes under the physical hazard and all these must be avoided at every point of processing (farm to fork or Grass to Glass).

A total of 42 physical hazard related recalls were issued in the U.S. in 2017, with metal and plastic contamination topping the list in this category. Each accounted for 12 and 11 total recalls, respectively. Almost all of these recalls were for various meat products, including one issued by poultry giant Perdue Foods.

In 2017 a global confectionery giant recalled whooping amount of its products globally because of possible physical hazard in the products .

To avoid above issues, manufacturers must deploy suitable mechanism to detect and eliminate any possible physical hazard in the finished goods. Selection of the mechanism must be based out of basis risk assessment and type of possible foreign object in the entire process.

Development in modern technology has given some robust options to detect and eliminate foreign objects from finished / semi finished goods. In recent years these options seems to be very effective and are used across the globe. Some of the available and effective options are:

MAGNETS :