SAFETY IN THE PLANT
DIGITISING FOOD SAFETY A guide for food manufacturers looking to digitise their systems
Data must be made available across the whole supply chain T
he food industry is facing a digital transformation.
It
will soon be necessary to fully digitise processes and
procedures for food safety to enable auditing and monitoring online. Ian Scott-Mance, technology manager at Mettler-Toledo Product Inspection explains that these measures can no longer be put on the back burner since US-based Initiatives such as the ‘New Era of Smarter Food Safety’ by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and ‘Race to the Top’ by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) place such importance on digital auditability. Full traceability is already a prerequisite for certain products to access some Asian markets. China, for example, requires products to be fully traceable before they can be sold inside its domestic market. In addition, the big players
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in the food retail sector are imposing stricter requirements for farm-to- fork traceability, which must be embedded in digital supply chain management. Food manufacturers must therefore focus on data collection, the essential starting point for any project looking to improve food safety through careful
tracking. In this article, Ian Scott- Mance details the four key steps they should take:
The digitisation of food safety does not normally mean a complete system replacement. A simple device upgrade or the purchase of a software option is often sufficient
STEP 1: CONDUCT A THOROUGH DATA AUDIT Data should be made available across the entire supply chain, in an accessible, digital form. Therefore, a comprehensive audit must be carried out to determine how viable this is. Many of the required food safety data and processes should already be available and well documented, as they should already have been created when applying for food safety certifications. For example, production line critical control points ought to have been identified through earlier HACCP certification and appropriate inspection systems should already be installed there. Nevertheless, the audit often proves
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