Dear ewhite,
I do have some experience of manufacturing deep frozen products (seafood) but not fruit bars. I guess it will be necessary for you to initially select the relevant microbial parameters for control purposes. APC ??
As per previous post, our customer did accelerated testing at non-deep frozen temps so as to get a conclusion in (from memory) approx. 3-4 weeks. This involved microbial testing for 3-4 parameters, eg APC. I don’t know the full procedural details but I expect the technical basis was analogous to earlier post.
Obviously it depends on yr volume of work but, if you yourself lack the technical knowledge, might be cost-effective to pay a 3rd party organisation to do the first time, then borrow the logic. Or maybe the detail is readily available in textbooks (I recall previously looking some time ago and got negative result). I also remember a detailed post on this forum in the past giving some (accelerated) equations also.
Rgds / Charles.C
Thank you Charles and Anish for sharing your experiences, however perhaps you could comment further:
I am familiar with the direct and indirect shelf life testing that was described, and I agree that it is a very complete program. However, I assumed this was mostly used to establish product shelf life, and a lesser program could be used for continued monitoring. Am I just wishful, or does such a thing exist?
In our case, we already have an established shelf life, and no one is asking us to provide the details of why it is set as such. Rather, we would like to provide documentation that we are verifying the shelf life through regular monitoring. I have attached a copy of a form that I created to give you an idea of the parameters I plan on testing. Please let me know if you think this would be sufficient if testing according to our finshed product sampling plan-- 1 bar per 6 pallets, or at least 1 bar per flavor/brand.