Packaged Food Inspection Applications

Baked goods such as breads, cakes, or cookies, are sold in a wide range of packaging materials to address different food characteristics: Snack foods like chips, crackers, and nuts are often packaged in metallized film, which will influence the choice of detection technology used. Desiccant packets are often used to extend shelf life, and the content and positioning of these packets can have an impact on detection parameters. Warm bread coming out of the oven, coupled with its salt content, tends to have a high product effect, which complicates the inspection process.

Due to large variations in products and packaging types, selecting appropriate inspection equipment is crucial. Metal detectors work well for some applications, while X-ray systems offer expanded capabilities for others. Checkweighers are essential to maintain ingredient accuracy and meet legal requirements, helping to ensure customer trust.

Our evolving inspection technologies help baking and snack food companies make certain their products are free of physical contaminants and all products are present in multi-item packs. 

The closer you get to the farm, the closer you get to many foreign objects.  Inspecting foods like nuts, berries, grains, and vegetables in bulk before processing is crucial to food safety and quality. Contaminants such as stones, metal fragments, and other foreign materials can be present in raw ingredients, posing health risks to consumers and potentially damaging processing equipment. Early detection and removal of these contaminants prevents costly recalls and maintains the integrity of the final product.

The primary way to address this issue is to install sophisticated detection systems, such as using X-ray systems before materials are accepted, which augments a metal detection program upstream and X-ray analysis after final packaging.  Our bulk inspection systems are flexible enough to accommodate nearly any type of food product and include software technology to eliminate false rejects, as well as multilane inspection and rejection to minimize scrap and rework.

Candy manufacturers must be aware of several specific considerations when looking for physical contaminants.  Varying moisture levels or high salt content can generate a significant product signal, which could be considered a contaminant by the metal detector and falsely rejected from the manufacturing line. Irregular shapes and sizes of candies can create challenges in consistent inspection and detection. Foil or metallic packaging can interfere with metal detection, requiring the use of X-ray systems for accurate inspection. 

High-speed production lines may require advanced inspection systems that can keep up without compromising accuracy.  Temperature changes of the product and the environment can affect the performance of metal detectors. These effects can be minimized with appropriate calibration and product set up. Products with multiple components, such as filled chocolates, may require more sophisticated inspection techniques to detect contaminants within different layers. Additionally, ensuring that inspection equipment meets industry standards and regulatory requirements for food safety is crucial. 

Thermo Fisher Scientific can help you address these factors. We provide solutions that can effectively detect and manage physical contaminants, helping you to ensure the safety and quality of your candy and chocolate products.

Processing and distributing dairy products requires stringent quality control and adherence to regulatory standards. Physical contaminants must be excluded, and weight specifications must be met. The aim is to keep consumers safe and protect the brand's reputation while managing cost pressures and operational efficiency. The variety of packaging materials, such as shelf-stable, biodegradable, metallized, and transparent options, adds complexity.

Whether it’s for cheese, yogurt, ice cream, milk powders, whey protein concentrates, sauces, or other related items, our advanced product inspection technology helps ensure quality and safety by detecting physical contaminants and weighing package content throughout processing. 

Frozen foods present unique challenges to metal detectors. Wet and conductive products with high salt and fat content (like dough, cheese, or seasonings) can produce a response in the metal detector system that can be mistaken for, or mask, a contaminant response. This is known as product effect. For frozen products, the level of freeze is important; partially frozen product will respond differently versus fully frozen product when passing through a metal detector and, unless taken into account, this can cause false rejects as production conditions vary throughout the day.

Our metal detectors utilize multiscan technology that can scan up to five user-selectable frequencies running at one time.  Multiscan technology provides unmatched sensitivity and the highest probability of finding ferrous, non-ferrous, and stainless steel metal contaminants in challenging applications in frozen foods with high product effect.  Multiscan technology allows a single metal detector to achieve the effectiveness and sensitivity that would previously require several machines operating in-line.

Fruits and vegetables are grown in fields and orchards, and on farms, where rocks, metals, and glass particles can be harvested along with the produce and enter the production process. Equipment pieces like mesh screens or bolts can also fall into the produce during sorting, cleaning, and packaging. When fruits or vegetables are mixed into other products, like berries added into a cereal, there are more opportunities for contaminants to be introduced into the production process.

Most manufacturers use food safety and quality inspection technology, including X-ray inspection, metal detection, and checkweighing equipment, to help ensure their products are free of physical contaminants, and meet weight requirements. However, different packaging types, such as metallized film, make it challenging to decide which technology to use and where in the plant it is needed.  Thermo Fisher Scientific is a recognized leader in providing in-line inspection and monitoring solutions to help ensure safety, quality and production efficiency by detecting physical contaminants, validating net content, verifying product integrity and analyzing constituents.

Processing meat products involves significant quality and safety challenges.  Besides avoiding biological contamination through rigorous sanitary processes, which can be challenging, detecting physical contaminants is also difficult. The high product effect in meat can mimic foreign objects and necessitate a compromise in sensitivity to obtain accurate results. Temperature, salt content, and product size changes during processing further complicate detection.

Our Multiscan metal detection technology addresses these challenges by using five adjustable frequencies to improve detection sensitivity. This technology adapts to product changes and survives harsh cleaning conditions, helping to ensure reliable performance. Additionally, the software learns and adjusts to product variability, minimizing user intervention and maximizing throughput. For non-metallic contaminants like bones and plastics, X-ray inspection is necessary. Thermo Scientific advanced X-ray systems detect these foreign objects based on density differences.

Examples of challenging meat applications include spiced and salted processed products, deli-style layered slices, sausages, moist or bloody whole muscle cuts, and ready-to-eat meals containing meat. Fortunately, our product inspection technology can help overcome these meat inspection challenges and enhance food safety in meat processing.

Food manufacturers who innovate with plant-based protein products must maintain strict safety measures to prevent foreign object contamination, ensure quality, and avoid costly recalls. Key ingredients like vegetables, nuts, grains, and legumes are grown in fields where stones, metals, and glass particles can be harvested with the produce and enter the production process. And to meet regulations, the content weight must match what appears on the label.

Plant-based products are highly processed, and each step poses a risk of contamination from equipment. Broken screens, loose hardware, or other metal objects may enter the process stream. Industrial food metal detectors, including those that utilize Multiscan and Selectscan technologies, can find ferrous, non-ferrous, and stainless steel metal contaminants. While industrial food X-ray inspection systems can find both metallic and non-metallic contaminants.

Thermo Fisher Scientific’s food inspection technologies can help ensure that the plant-based innovations you bring to market are free from foreign objects that could damage your brand and pose a risk to consumers. 

A typical process for pet food manufacturing involves many steps: ingredient processing, blending, cooking, molding, packaging, storage, and transportation. Food safety inspections should occur at those points where foreign matter, including debris from worn equipment, could enter the process. These high-risk areas are the critical control points. At each critical control point, producers must consider the product and package being inspected to select the right technology solution. 

Processing environment considerations include equipment cleaning regimens, which can vary between light (end-of-process dry and wet food packaging) and heavy (cooking and mixing ingredients, where food buildup is difficult to avoid). Besides preventing microbial contamination, manufacturers must select instrumentation with an adequate ingress protection rating to withstand moisture and dust from the environment over a long service life. 

The same regulatory framework governing human food production applies to pet food and treats. However, governmental regulations, like those of the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA), generally are broad and cover a wide spectrum of risks and processing requirements. Retailers may set even higher standards through codes of practice required to do business with them, establishing a wider food safety framework through increased prescriptiveness. Retailer codes of practice typically are guided by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI).

Our product inspection technologies for pet foods help ensure consistent production of high quality, contaminant-free meals and treats for dogs, cats, and other household pets. Food safety and brand protection are as important for these food products as they are for every other member of the family.