FSSC 22000: 2.5.13 - Product development

The FSSC 22000 Scheme – version 5.1, in item 2.5.13, declare: “A product design and development procedure shall be established, implemented, and maintained for new products and changes to product manufacturing processes to ensure safe and legal products are produced”. Including: “The need to conduct production and shelf-life trials to validate product formulation and processes are capable of producing a safe product and meet customer requirements”. Regarding this item, when a production test is performed, a certain quantity of product will be processed. Part of it will be analyzed to validate the shelf life and nutritional composition. And the rest of the production, what should be the destination of this product? Can it be used for sale? Or should it be segregated and used as a reprocess in the next productions?

Hi Xenna,

A product without decent shelf life testing cannot be put on the market. Because what happens when you learn after your testing that the product is actually unsafe? A recall is way more costly than tossing some product.

I currently work in the meat industry and we toss any left over test production. It is not sold or gifted to employee's because I simply do not know if it will still be safe to consume.

However when I worked in (ready) meal production we had hunderds of previous developed recipies as reference data. So we could usually safely establish a minimum shelf life, get it on market, and than finish the rest of the testing (depending on the client and product).

So depending it all depends on your product and how much (reference) data you have.