E/LMS 12-18500 : Methods To Ensure And Improve Quality In Agricultural Products

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Procedures were established, in general, aimed at the maintenance and improvement of the quality of the process of value-adding.

In modern times you have professional societies, governmental regulatory bodies (such as the FAO, RPO, WHO), and factory inspection systems, aimed at assuring the quality of products sold to consumers. These are called quality assurance systems, processes, procedures, regulations or guidelines.

The last decade has witnessed several encouraging trends in the thinking of food safety. First, it has become clear that the responsibility for food safety is not only up to the Government or the abattoir owner but evenly distributed along the entire food chain of production and does not reside solely with the final consumer.

Secondly, new strategies have been adopted that engineer safety into food products, such as Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP), Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) and Good Agricultural Practices (GAP). Foodborne diseases remain an important challenge to public health, thus causing a major burden of illness and requiring substantial resources for their control and prevention.

New active surveillance strategies can provide better data on the burden of illness and can track trends in the incidence of specific diseases as prevention improvements such as HACCP systems are implemented. Although the principles of HACCP have been known for more than 20 years, within most food companies little was known on this subject. Furthermore, legal requirements for HACCP in Europe-EC Directive 93/43 (EEC, 1993) and USA (FDA, 1995) meant the principles of HACCP and training of HACCP skills had to be put in place in a relatively short period of time (De Winter, 1998).

With the promulgation of the Regulations of the Meat Safety Act, Act 40 of 2000, the implementation of food safety systems such as Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) and Hygiene Management Systems (HMS) has now become a requirement in the abattoir industry.

Most of these systems or guidelines have been developed in such a manner that they can assist a practitioner to move through a procedure that can reduce the process variability or identify specific problems in the process. However, other methodologies may need to be developed to allow for sufficient customisation to a certain specific process. As a start, these tools can be utilized to ensure process maintenance and improvement. They include:

Analysis
Improvement
Monitoring
Implementation

Furthermore, it is important to note that the mere use of the quality control tools does not necessarily constitute a quality programme. Thus, to achieve lasting improvements in quality, it is essential to establish a system that will continuously promote quality in all aspects of the value-adding operation.

Principles of quality control include:

Defining quality
Quality control
Measuring quality
Analysing quality
Methods to evaluate the quality
New techniques for improving quality

These methods vary from rapid platform tests to more sophisticated and time-consuming analysing methods including, e.g. microbiological quality tests.

However, the scope and quality of quality control and methodology depending on the size of the production unit, the volume of production and the product mix.

Small processing systems, producing only one product, start with limited production capacity and must rely on less sophisticated quality control methods. However, the quality control methods used should be reliable and cover the most essential quality criteria like hygiene.

The quality control standards and methodology used should be under continuous evaluation and development according to increases in and diversification of production and improvement of processing methods.

There are hundreds of food safety hazards and prioritising them according to the type of product, process and end-use, an effective, practical, and economical safety management system can be developed. When analysing the hazards, the risks can be assessed by determining severity, incidence, and onset.

Example:

Where Risk Occurs	Hazard Sources	Possible Actions
In the production unit	The greatest risk is cross-contamination from raw meat either by direct contact or by worker contact. Other risks include poor “first-in-first-out” stock control and poor heat sealing of plastic packaging.	Implement systems that ensure cross-contamination cannot occur. Check that all products are fully dried. Check heat seals.
In the transport chain	Poor handling can result in packaging being perforated and allowing moisture pick-up. Products transported with other hazardous material can become contaminated.	Pack bags in strong, sealed cartons. Explain how you want the product transported. Use a reliable transport company even if a little more expensive.
At the point of consumption where the biltong is placed in bowls on the bar as a snack	Contamination due to flies or to people not washing their hands after using the toilet. The possibility that any biltong left over at the end of the day will be put out again the next day.	Control solutions become difficult at this distance from production. However, provide advice by visiting your consumers and labelling your product. for example, suggest that proprietors only put small amounts in bowls to minimise customer contamination or provide individual snack plates to customers.

The objectives of a risk or hazard analysis, known as the hazard analysis and critical control point (HACCP) system, are to identify:

Where the hazards occur
The nature of the hazards
Potential solutions to minimise risks that might damage the consumer or cause complaints
Cost/benefit analysis regarding the effect of such processes and procedures are developed

Once the methods to mitigate or prevent the risk have been established it is important that you ascertain whether the benefit accrued is more than the cost to implement the control. When suggesting an improved methodology for controlling risk to a superior, it is advisable that the cost-benefit be presented also. Look at the following example of cost-benefit analysis in a sausage-making plant:

Example:

Where Risk Occurs

Hazard Sources

Possible Actions

Potential Cost Benefit

At the meat grinding (mincing) machine

The operator of the mincing/grinding machine picks up the chunks of meat with his/her hands to place in the grinding machine. If the operator’s hands are dirty, then the risk of Contamination between different sausage lots occurs.

Possible action 1: The operator should wash his/her hands with antibacterial soap and rinse and dry his/her hands between every lot.

Possible action 2: The operator should wear new disposal plastic gloves for each batch.

An operator makes 50kg batches of ground mince to go on to the sausage maker.

At R 30/kg this means 50kg x R30/kg = R1500.

If a batch is contaminated with bacteria such as Salmonella, then R1500 could be lost. Additionally, if the sausage were to cause illness among a wide group of consumers the loss in revenue due to the poor reputation of the manufacturer could have even higher financial losses.

The cost of one bottle of antibacterial soap is R15.

The cost-benefit of this control method is thus R1485 or 100 times the cost of the control.