Unpasteurised fruit juice manufacturing
Good day all,
I am currently working at a fresh fruit juice manufacturing plant and I must say, coming from a dry-blend, shelf stable background this is all a bit overwhelming.
I am looking to make contact with anyone in this industry for advice and guidance.
The short shelf life has me asking whether our micro testing is now a positive release process based on historical data? As the lag between testing and receiving results makes it difficult for me to understand the corrective action that is required here.
Secondly, the production facility has no extraction and thus the air plate count for yeast is on the rise and apart from cleaning and sanitation I am trying to understand how to bring these numbers back down to spec.
Thanking you in advance!
The short shelf life often precludes positive release against micro - not clear where you are, but in the UK a "freshly squeezed" juice has a life of up to 14 days from production. Beyond this, the regulators view is that it's no longer freshly squeezed.
If you're not specifically intending it to be freshly squeezed then you've possibly got a bit more leeway, but pushing the life much beyond 14 days is probably going to require freezing. If you're going down the chilled route then waiting potentially 5 days for classical micro eats over 30% of the life before you can do anything with it, so you're going to want to look at process validation, with micro for monitoring rather than release.
What types of fruit are you processing?
If it's all acidic / low pH then your life is a bit simpler, but as vegetable products are becoming more popular I've seen a significant rise in unpasteurised blends where the pH is >4.5, often made by start-ups without much of a clue, and these unnerve me a bit ;)
Do a bit of a literature search and you will find cases of food poisoning from juice - primarily Salmonella and E. coli - so you want to be on top of this risk. The common trend amongst many of these cases of food poisoning is poor, or outright stupid, washing processes...
In your position I'd therefore be focussing on your wash process and validation thereof. The exact significance will depend on the type of fruit and the nature of the extraction process(es) that you're using, but I'd ignore that and look at whatever your worst-case is going to be.
Good day all,
I am currently working at a fresh fruit juice manufacturing plant and I must say, coming from a dry-blend, shelf stable background this is all a bit overwhelming.
I am looking to make contact with anyone in this industry for advice and guidance.
The short shelf life has me asking whether our micro testing is now a positive release process based on historical data? As the lag between testing and receiving results makes it difficult for me to understand the corrective action that is required here.
Secondly, the production facility has no extraction and thus the air plate count for yeast is on the rise and apart from cleaning and sanitation I am trying to understand how to bring these numbers back down to spec.
Thanking you in advance!
Hi matsijea,
I seem to remember a similar OP to the current one.
Perhaps do a little searching although Post 2 likely applies to UK scenario.
There are some rapid testing micro Procedures these days also. Depends on targets.
You won't be able to do a positive hold procedure. There are rapid "indicator micro" testing you may be able to do, but even then it takes a couple days and that's significant shelf-life in your case.
Do you do any processing that is a form of micro control? Not necessarily full pasteurizing, but heating or UV or something?
Your priorities in your process would be equipment sanitation as another person mentioned, environmental sanitation, raw material quality / safety, and employee GMP's. Since you have no kill step you have no room for errors.