How to manage temperature control during manufacture?
Hello,
I am the QA at a small manufacturer of dips and I have been there for one week! Before me they have had no dedicated QA but they do have a consultant. We are trying to get SQF certification.
My question is about the 2 hour 4 hour rule. At the moment the 2 hour 4 hour rule is a CCP written into our programme and the consultant I have been working with told me that we should not use the 2 hour 4 hour rule as a CCP and at the moment our product is definitely in the danger zone for more than 4 hours total.
We don't have time to do temperature validations before our SQF audit so I am not sure what to do. We are constantly taking temperature readings of the product during the manufacturing process but this seems pointless if we haven't done a validation to work out what temperature is safe and for how long we can leave it at that temp. If I remove the 2hr/4hr temperature rule as a CCP during the process and we stop taking temperature readings during the manufacturing process should we just monitor temperature post production to make sure it is in a safe zone during storage and maybe do micro testing on several samples per batch to verify that the product is safe? It really seems to me that we need to do a validation...
I hope that makes sense! I have never worked in the food industry my previous QA role was in Pharma which seems to me a little more rigorous maybe...thanks in advance for your help!
You cannot simply test product AFTER it's made
You must perform validation studies to know what the working temp/time limits are
Alot of this depends on your ingredients.............for some 2 hours is too long at ambient and then you will not only have quality issues, but food safety ones as well.
Backing up Glenn here.......audit needs delayed.
Validation done properly for time/temp is going to take at least a month.......you need to have sufficient data to decide on working parameters