Snack Food Kill Step Requirement
Are snack food manufacturers using raw materials that have gone through a validated kill step required to perform an additional kill step in their own process?
Are snack food manufacturers using raw materials that have gone through a validated kill step required to perform an additional kill step in their own process?
Hi ganderson,
It may depend on the specific situation.
Can you add a little context ? eg type pf product involved / further manipulation ?
Charles,
This is a dry, low moisture operations that is taking a base pretzel and simply adding a vegetable oil / spice blend to the surface. The CFR indicates we are ok without a kill step if our raw materials have been through a kill step and we do nothing to adulterate the product during our own processing.
Charles,
This is a dry, low moisture operations that is taking a base pretzel and simply adding a vegetable oil / spice blend to the surface. The CFR indicates we are ok without a kill step if our raw materials have been through a kill step and we do nothing to adulterate the product during our own processing.
Is there an existing (safe) history of analogous processes to the one above ?
I guess it all comes down to material-procedure risk assessment/hygiene. I have no familiarity with pretzel however I can imagine that the spice is already one sensitive component.
Seems analogous to a yoghurt process where various items (fruits, nuts) can be added after fermentation. The caveat is that if something does go wrong the risk is high..
I work for spice blending company and we bring everything in already processed since we do not have a kill step in our plant. So we are probably a little over kill on GMP's and sanitation because the main risk to the product is us. As part of our risk analysis I call out the treatment step for all the ingredients coming in and we also measure moisture content to show that bacteria is not capable of growing in our blends. We do get some raw flours but we conduct micro testing on them prior to use to ensure they are free from bacteria and then treat them like an allergen scheduling wise, ran at the end of the day and cleaning conducted before going to other products.