6 replies to this topic

[egonwie79]

My company does apple crumble pie and recently we found out that the pie pastry might have been contaminated with a foreign material of the pie tin( primary packaging) during processing. My ask now is that what equipment would I used to detect this foreign material. I am running all my pies through an xray detection as a operation process control and the material that is the foreign material is the pie tins. Really confused how to detect the FM as the foreign material is the primary packaging for the pies. Need urgent help.

[Food Police]

If you can transfer the pies out of the tin, run through the xray and then repackage them in good tins, that would be your best bet. I am not sure how else you can detect a foreign material that isnt really foreign. How incorporated is the tin material into the crust? Was the packaging material inspected at receiving? Is it defective or was it misused?

[Mathieu Colmant]

Good afternoon egonwie

 

I will start with some questions...

1. Did you (or your company) already found some material from the pie tin, or do you think it might happen ?
2. If you found some material, was it due to a breakage of the tin or was it loose material staying between 2 tins from production factory ?
3. is it mandatory to have metal detection or can you use other strategies ?

[egonwie79]

If you can transfer the pies out of the tin, run through the xray and then repackage them in good tins, that would be your best bet. I am not sure how else you can detect a foreign material that isnt really foreign. How incorporated is the tin material into the crust? Was the packaging material inspected at receiving? Is it defective or was it misused?

 

When we disassembled our pastry vmeg during sanitation, we realized that there were broken pieces of tins in the inner housing of the vmeg which led us to conclude that an infraction happened during production that wasn't caught. We have placed the entire lot on hold pending investigation and next steps. I will try the recommendation of transferring pies out of the tins and run it though as recommended above. Thank you very much for the suggestion.

[egonwie79]

 

Good afternoon egonwie

 

I will start with some questions...

1. Did you (or your company) already found some material from the pie tin, or do you think it might happen ?
2. If you found some material, was it due to a breakage of the tin or was it loose material staying between 2 tins from production factory ?
3. is it mandatory to have metal detection or can you use other strategies ?

 

When we disassembled our pastry vmeg during sanitation, we realized that there were broken pieces of tins in the inner housing of the vmeg which led us to conclude that an infraction happened during production that wasn't caught. We have placed the entire lot on hold pending investigation and next steps. The broken tin we saw put together will not give a full tin tray. This has made us to conclude that already packaged pies should be having it.

[Food Police]

When we disassembled our pastry vmeg during sanitation, we realized that there were broken pieces of tins in the inner housing of the vmeg which led us to conclude that an infraction happened during production that wasn't caught. We have placed the entire lot on hold pending investigation and next steps. I will try the recommendation of transferring pies out of the tins and run it though as recommended above. Thank you very much for the suggestion.

 

Ahh, I see. Yeah, I think 100% visual inspection when removing the pie from the tin would be your best bet in this case to assess the damage. If the flakes are loose, they may not transfer with the pie and that will solve your problem. Then if you do also run them through the X-ray after removing from old tin, make sure its sensitivity is appropriate to pick up any tray pieces. If you are running the pies through the x-ray with the tin, your X-ray is probably set up to ignore the pie tin as its part of the finished product, and it wont kick out any small pieces until its adjusted.

[Mathieu Colmant]

Well, can you associate all broken pieces to one tin ? If it is the case, there should be one (or 2, 3) broken tin. You "only" need to find that (or the few) broken tins

If no piece match with another, then it will suggest you can have many damaged tins, every one losing a little part of it.

In both cases, Xray should have seen the damaged tins, if it is correctly set up. Damage a tin, put some crumble in it and pass this through the xray, you will see what happens. (identify the product in case xray don't find anything... I had the problem when making a routine test for metal detection during an audit, we needed to open about 20 packs to find the metal piece...)

 

But there is another possibility :

The tins come in your factory with some pieces between them. Like for glass jars, have a process for "cleaning" the tins, for example with compressed air.

In that case, when was the last time the vmeg was dissassembled ? How can you be sure that the last production is concerned, and not a previous one ?