Food safety and transport

Good morning all,

I am working at a refinery that produces vegetable edible oils and fats.These products are mostly sold as food but we also have customers that buy these products for technical application. Whenever this is the case our product name is changed on the documentation and we add lines stating the product is no longer suitable as food.

The problem might be that we have customers that arrange their own transport to load our product into their tank car.

They arrive with a 'Foodstuffs only' tank car but are actually loading a product which is declared as no longer suitable for food. In my opinion the truck than no longer is a 'foodstuffs only' tank. and in line of chain responisibilty I want to tell our customers this is no longer allowed while the product is in fact of food quality.

Do you think, that in this case it is OK that a non-foodstuff product (of food quality) is loaded into a 'foodstuffs only' tank car?

Very excited to read your thoughts.

Kind regards,

Dan

Is the product supplied for technical applications different to the food-grade material? Or do you e.g. add something to it to render it unsuitable for food use?
If not, i.e. the specifications are the same as your food products, then surely it is still food grade? I'm therefore not sure why you'd declare it as no longer suitable for food?
Surely it's somewhat irrelevant what your customers are electing to do with the material once it has left your site, so you might be making life more difficult for yourselves by stating "not suitable for food" on products that actually are suitable?

i agree with above post

IF the material is identical and the only difference is the end use (which really doesn't matter to you IN THIS SPECIFIC scenario), then i don't see an issue at all

HOWEVER, if you manufacture one that is NOT food grade, then you should never load that tanker type

Thanks for the replies! Highly appriciated