Shelf Life Extension of Expired Bread Crumbs
Hi Guys,
We have old stock of Bread Crumbs which is expired last week and our management would like to extend the shelf-life. But our supplier refused to write a extension letter and we have to do our internal testing. What types of testing I should perform on it? According to our supplier's COA, only granulation, sensory and moisture were tested. Should we just test moisture sufficient to extend the shelflife?
Please advise. Thanks.
Do you know why the supplier refused to extend the shelf life? Are the bread crumbs going to be used as they are right now or any further processing is going to be performed? Depending of what the final product is I would do micro testing as well. Which parameters are included on the specification of the bread crumbs? This may help you to determine which parameters can affect your final product
Do you know why the supplier refused to extend the shelf life? Are the bread crumbs going to be used as they are right now or any further processing is going to be performed? Depending of what the final product is I would do micro testing as well. Which parameters are included on the specification of the bread crumbs? This may help you to determine which parameters can affect your final product
The bread crumbs go through CCP heating kill step to become RTE products. The only parameters on the spec are Granulation, Sensory and Moisture.
Unless the bread crumbs have been exposed to moisture micro shouldn't be an issue. There might be stalenesss that has developed over time but that is outside of my area so I am not sure what you would test for. Sounds like the supplier doesn't want to accept liability for a less than desirable product.
Conduct sensory and moisture. If it passes testing then feel free to use.
As far as suppliers not extending shelf-life of their materials that's pretty common. If I had customers request shelf-life extensions I would tell them I have no idea because the material was outside of our control and I don't have a guarantee of storage conditions when it leaves our facility. But, I have always given the option of them sending us a sample of the material and we would evaluate for possible shelf-life extension. Our customers accepted this about 50% of the time. In most cases we would extend the shelf-life, but not to the degree they wanted. Some cases we told customers not to use the material based on our evaluation.
Hi Guys,
We have old stock of Bread Crumbs which is expired last week and our management would like to extend the shelf-life. But our supplier refused to write a extension letter and we have to do our internal testing. What types of testing I should perform on it? According to our supplier's COA, only granulation, sensory and moisture were tested. Should we just test moisture sufficient to extend the shelflife?
Please advise. Thanks.
I agree with 2nd para. of Ryan,
"sensory" in OP is IMO meaningless without further details.
Ask the supplier what the criteria for shelf life (SL) was.
If moisture, you presumably have the answer. If SL based on all the factors as stated in yr OP then you are probably stymied unless you are sensorily/granularly competent in assessing the shelf life of bread.
Bread Crumbs moisture is usually low (less than 7 % ) so the growth of microbiology (low risk )
you can make
1- moisture
2- Microbiology
Bread crumbs contain oils and fats during the large shelf life may be Rancidity is possible
So the important tests
1- Detection of rancidness
2- Peroxide value
Answers above are pretty much on point. Just make sure you have documentation to prove that the results of your testing are good to cover you just in case of an issue later on.
However, this is always the issue with QA, out of shelf life items/expired and management wants to use it... IF QA allows the use of out of shelf life/expired items, this almost always set precedent for next time this occurs and you end up just being swallowed by this system of using expired/out of shelf life products.
I shake my head when I go to a facility where their QA allows such thing and they think ALL QA will allow this. They even have the guts to say, its low risk anyway, we can still use it. If the supplier does not want to give extension to their product, there is probably a reason for it.
I understand risk assessment but, management always always takes advantage of this, so please stand your ground. I hope this is not a regular practice in your company and you might want to look into production planning and purchasing of these expired items, and refuse to do fire fighting on such.