Food processors monitor many different parameters to ensure that the foods, beverages, or ingredients they are manufacturing meet safety, quality, and legal requirements. Perhaps the most important of these parameters is temperature. However, temperature does not stand alone. It goes hand-in-hand with time. Think of all the processes that entail the monitoring of both temperature and time: aseptic processes; processes for low-acid foods; nuts for roasting, dry roasting, oil production, or other processes; bakery processes; and fermentations in the food, beverage, and pharmaceutical industries, to name a few.
Temperature monitoring is more than just tracking changes in temperature. It entails the following additional tasks:
- Establishing the proper parameters to ensure that safety, quality, and legal standards and specifications are met
- Ensuring the temperature monitoring devices are fit for purpose and have been properly calibrated
- Confirming that the persons doing the monitoring are properly educated on how to use and interpret results from the equipment
- Compiling forms or electronic systems to record results
- Setting up programs to quickly address measurements that are out of compliance.
The bottom line is that temperature monitoring is more than just a line on a specific procedure that might read, for example, “The operator shall monitor and record the temperature of the mercury-in glass thermometer at 15-minute intervals.”
Establishing the proper parameters for heating is a task for a processing authority or the research and development team. Safety is the number-one consideration. Thermal processes must be established to ensure that potential pathogens are controlled. When the Preventive Controls for Human Foods rule1 (21 CFR Part 117) was enacted, processors expended a great deal of effort reevaluating
traditional processes, such as baking and frying, to validate that they not only yielded quality products but that they also provided an adequate kill step. They also worked to update their food safety programs to ensure that they met the requirements of the rule. As an example, this work showed that traditional baking processes were adequate to ensure safety and quality. However, cookies or brownies with inclusions such as nuts or chocolate nibs presented a different challenge. The inclusions did not receive as much heat as the dough, so the emphasis was now on ensuring that the ingredients themselves received a kill step by the supplier.
All instruments that are used to monitor temperature must be properly calibrated and suitable for the task. How often an instrument is calibrated depends upon the instrument itself and should be determined by the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) team. A supplier of a handheld
thermometer might recommend that the instrument be calibrated monthly. If the measurements being made are critical for safety, then the HACCP team might recommend more frequent calibrations.
References:
i. U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Code of Federal Regulations. Title 21, Ch. I, Subpart B, Part 117. “Current Good Manufacturing Practice, Hazard Analysis, and Risk Based Preventive Controls for Human Food.
ii. FDA. Code of Federal Regulations. Title 21, Ch. I, Subpart B, Part 113.40. “Equipment and Procedures.”
iii. Falkenstein, Drew. “The 2007 Castleberry Farms Botulism Outbreak.” Food Poison Journal. February 25, 2015
iv. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “Botulism Associated with Commercially Canned Chili Sauce—Texas and Indiana, July 2007
Article by: By Richard F. Stier, M.S.