Guide to Food Safety and Quality During Transportation (eBook)

Controls, Standards and Practices

John M. Ryan (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF | EPUB

2013 | 1. Auflage
288 Seiten
Elsevier Science (Verlag)
978-0-12-407895-6 (ISBN)

Infos

Guide to Food Safety and Quality During Transportation provides a sound foundation for the improvement of the transportation sector responsible for the movement of food. While food safety agencies have been focused on producer, processor, retail, and restaurant food safety, the industry that moves the food has been largely overlooked. Ensuring trucks and containers are properly cleaned and disinfected, proper maintenance of refrigeration temperatures during transport, and avoiding paperwork delays are all areas of concern. Lack of government oversight has resulted in multiple, non-standardized approaches to food safety that are inspection-dependent. This book focuses specifically on the food movers normally overlooked by today's food safety auditors, compliance schemes, government agencies, quality control personnel, and transportation executives. It outlines delivery control solutions and provides basic standards designed to protect the transportation industry, as well as addressing problems associated with food transportation and practical solutions that are focused on container sanitation and traceability food safety and quality needs. - Explores food transportation in transition including science, research, current writings and law, bringing the reader quickly up to date on industry practices and trends - Presents case studies of the latest resources for identifying, tracking, and addressing safe transport issues - Includes FDA and USDA Guidance information , standards and certification, and food safety and quality planning procedures to establish a foundation for transportation system prevention, implementation, standardization, measurement and improvement

Dr. John Ryan was the Administrator for the Hawaii State Department of Agriculture's Quality Assurance Division. He was responsible for developing food safety and traceability systems within the state of Hawaii. Dr. Ryan piloted the USA's first farm-to-fork award winning internet-enabled RFID food traceability system and one of America's early high-technology sensor based temperature control supply chain food safety system. He has recently worked with a number of international companies to establish real-time international food traceability that reports trans-Pacific transportation temperatures and tests for bacteria, explosives and container tampering. He spent two years as co-team leader for President Obama's FDA/CDC Information Technology team and also served on the FDA Performance Management and Standards Developments team. He is the president of Ryan Systems, located in Canyon Lake, CA.

Textauszug

Chapter two

Current and Emerging Transportation Food Safety Models

Abstract

Ongoing real-time monitoring of the condition of food during transportation processes is currently lacking through many operations in spite of the development of currently available technologies such as RFID, ZibBee; identification, location and condition and GPS traceability, sanitation and others capable of providing increased revenue and return on investment. Container, case and pallet level measurement strategies provide much needed management information that can not only improve food safety and process quality but may also improve shelf life and delivery controls.

The use of these technologies has been shown to be highly informative and successful in a number of local and international pilot and other projects focused on improving food transportation processes that begin at the farm and end at the retail outlet or restaurant from which consumers purchase and consume ill-controlled products.

Keywords

RFID (radio frequency identification); ROI (return on investment); shelf life; ZigBee; GPS; real time controls; ATP testing; Bin sanitation; allergens; logistics

This chapter focuses primarily on new monitoring approaches rather than older technologies that have been shown to be incapable of solving problems of process quality. As such, the emerging technologies are certain to cost money and may meet significant resistance from companies until returns on investment and financial benefits are documented and supported. As is the case in all technological cycles, the older technologies eventually fail to solve newly identified problems and demands, become too expensive to maintain, or require too many man-hours to justify their continued use. Somewhere along the change curve, for companies looking to the future and wanting to overtake the competition in terms of providing new services, the change from older technologies to newer ones becomes worth the investment.

For example, although data loggers have been in use for some time and have served a significant purpose, both the companies that produce them and their customers are moving in new directions. As an example, there are a number of companies that have developed sensor-enabled radiofrequency identification (RFID) systems and encased them in plastic pallets. Such applications prevent the tags from loss and damage, and data are automatically downloaded, thereby reducing manpower requirements and handling. Data loggers and other related technologies have failed to provide newly identified management data, and although, like black and white televisions, they will continue to be used for some time, they are doomed.

Return on Investment and Financial Benefits for Emerging Transportation Monitors

Assuming that food transportation is a definable, measurable and manageable process subject to quality control requirements, cost analysis and quality control principles may be applied in support of enhanced traceability, temperature control and sanitation standards. Figure 2.1 illustrates process improvement cost reductions and increased revenue streams.

FIGURE 2.1 ROI and Revenue

On the left hand side of the figure, Cost Reductions, we see the potential for better controls in the form of reduced inspections, culls, recalls, rejects, disposal, returns, lost customers, reduced insurance costs and manpower reductions, while the potential to increase throughput yields increases.

There are ways to analyze the impact of these cost reduction steps using standard quality cost models. Figure 2.2 is read from left to right and shows that for 100 pounds of harvested tomatoes it is not unusual to suffer a 30% or 30-pound loss due to culls and sorting (size, color, shape, etc.). If the entire 100 pounds had been salvaged, the sale price at $1/pound would have yielded the farmer $100. In the case above, the 30-pound loss yielded the farmer $70. Add to that loss, inspection costs of $2 per hour, overhead expenses of $.05 per pound (equals a loss of $3.50) and transportation losses at $.15 per pound at $10.50: the total loss at the farm per 100 pounds harvested is now $46.00.

FIGURE 2.2 Calculating Losses at the Farm Level

Figure 2.3 illustrates the same analysis at the distributor. The distributor sells his resulting yield (another 7-pound loss to the incoming 70 pounds) and with inspection, overhead and transportation costs wasted ends up with a loss of $25.10. The loss figures have increased proportionally because the loss to the distributor is no longer calculated at $.95/pound, but at the distributor’s selling price of $1.50/pound.

FIGURE 2.3 Calculating Losses at the Distribution Center

Similar calculations are carried out for this shipment through the processor (Figure 2.4), with the loss now calculated at $2.95 per pound based on 63 pounds incoming with a 15% loss totaled at $40.59.

FIGURE 2.4 Calculating Losses at the Processor

Finally the retailer above receives a reduced load of 53.55 pounds after paying $2.95 per pound at incoming. Outgoing loss is for the retailer at $3.50 per pound totals $39.22 (Figure 2.5).

FIGURE 2.5 Calculating Losses at the Retailer

By totaling losses through handler steps 1–4 (farm – distributor – processor – retailer) and adding up the yield, inspection, overhead and transportation losses, we can estimate a total loss of $150.90 for quality costs. But, when we go back to the originating farm and calculate the final sales potential to the customer, we can see that only 45.52 pounds were on the shelf and these were sold at $3.50 per pound. If all 100 pounds of the original harvest had gone straight to the retailer with no yield, inspection, overhead or transportation losses, the sales potential for the process calculates out at $895.00 and shows a process dollar loss at 16.86%.

If we take these calculations from Figure 2.6 and base them on a farm shipment potential of 1 000 000 pounds of tomatoes per week for a relatively small farm, the supply chain is losing $1.5 million per week (Figure 2.7).

FIGURE 2.6 Loss Summary

FIGURE 2.7 Projection to 1,000,000 Pounds per Week

Basic Traceability and Monitoring Models

Regardless of food safety regulations or the financial losses that might benefit from some type of traceability system, traceability and monitoring of the location, type and condition of food in transit should be part of every supply chain quality and food safety system. Figure 2.8 shows a simple farm-level beginning for case-level traceability. Cases are tagged with pre-printed barcode labels. In some cases the labels are printed at a distribution center and sent to the farm. This procedure ensures accuracy over the printing process and helps to keep product, farm and case identification numbers accurate and in sync with the distribution system. Once the barcode labels are applied to the boxes and the boxes are loaded onto pallets, the pallets may be tagged. The pallet tag could be a temperature monitoring tag that can be reused. Barcoded case tags and pallet monitoring tags are then read using (in this case) a handheld RFID reader. System software then forms a parent–child association between the pallet and all individual cases. The system knows that a particular pallet was loaded with specific boxes of produce. Data are stored in a local (farm) database.

FIGURE 2.8 Farm Traceability

The pallet is then loaded into a truck. If the truck has a unique identification number and has been sanitized, the truck could also have its own reader system to record pallets of food that were loaded into the trailer, the time and date of the load, pallet temperatures, and, if GPS is involved, the location of the loading process. In this manner, a record is established that combines container (pallet to truck) traceability, load condition (temperature), location and time/date stamps. This system also allows system users to track the shipment, receive temperature out-of-control alerts and view temperature trends.

Figure 2.9 shows the transit or truck time (tags, temperatures, etc. may also be read during transit). The pallet is then unloaded into the distribution center, where it passes through a door portal system that activates the tags and causes them to download all data into the distribution inventory server. When the pallet is moved into a cooler matching the product temperature requirements, the time/date/temperature information is again downloaded into the server, thus completing a farm-to-truck-to-distribution-center-to-cooler record.

FIGURE 2.9 Distribution Center

Outgoing pallets are typically built from cases brought into the cooler. Pallets moving out to a retail store, for example, may have a variety of products loaded, rather than a single product. In such cases each box barcode is read using a handheld reader and the pallet tag is again associated with the barcode information. This record then shows that individual cases were transferred to this pallet, were moved from the distribution center at a particular date and time, travelled in a particular truck at a specified temperature, and were delivered to a specific retail outlet.

Figure 2.10 shows a variety of pallets containing barcoded cases being delivered to a distribution center. All...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 30.12.2013
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie ► Gesundheitsfachberufe
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie ► Medizinische Fachgebiete ► Mikrobiologie / Infektologie / Reisemedizin
• Themenwelt: Studium ► 2. Studienabschnitt (Klinik) ► Pharmakologie / Toxikologie
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Physik / Astronomie
• Themenwelt: Technik ► Bauwesen
• Themenwelt: Technik ► Lebensmitteltechnologie
• ISBN-10: 0-12-407895-8 / 0124078958
• ISBN-13: 978-0-12-407895-6 / 9780124078956