What to do with chilled noodles if chill room was not operational due to power cut

Hello,

We produce pre-boiled noodles and then store them in chill room (temp ranging 4 - 8 degrees). unfortunately during a Sunday while no one was working, the chill room was not operational due to power cut. the next day, my manager check the packets and found to physical change in terms of colour, odour etc.. he decided to sell these packets.

is this a good practice? what corrective measures please?

thanks,

Rudra

Hello,

We produce pre-boiled noodles and then store them in chill room (temp ranging 4 - 8 degrees). unfortunately during a Sunday while no one was working, the chill room was not operational due to power cut. the next day, my manager check the packets and found to physical change in terms of colour, odour etc.. he decided to sell these packets.

is this a good practice? what corrective measures please?

thanks,

Rudra

Hi Rudra,

 

Offhand, I suggest the appropriate action is to have the product "dumped".

Absolutely they are inedible now

 

As for corrective actions, you have a lot of options

 

A) have staff come in on Sundays

 

B) set up an alarm system for the coolers where key people are notified when the system goes below X temp for X time

 

C) Ensure that you have a written procedure that is followed and documented when issues arise 

 

D) educate your manager on proper procedures when this happens so they don't think it's ok to sell product when there has been temperature abuse

As a preventive measure, you might consider buying a power generator: since we installed generators at both our plant and warehouse, we haven't had problems with power outage, and those generators are worth of every penny spent. Also, think of installing an alarm system at your cooler informing of temperature deviations.

Hi Rudra,

 

If your company cannot bring staff in on sundays, Wi-Fi enabled temperature loggers may be of use. Something like the product below can send email/text alerts when you drift outside of specification. 

 

https://www.thermowo...staurant-kit-2/

Corrective action = DUMPSTER and as an asidw - fire the stupid manager.

Dear all,

Thanks for your feedback.

We are conducting the following microbiological tests on fresh samples of pre-boiled noodles (stored @ 4-8 degrees):

please advise if these parameters are enough.

thnx,

Rudra

TPC Yeast & moulds Enumeration of Lactic Acid Bacteria Salmonella spp Staphylococcus E.coli

I'm not expert in noodle production, but just curious - what for are you doing Enumeration of Lactic Acid Bacteria? These are not pathogens, are they?