Raw Material Hazard Analysis

Dear All,

I am working on a project of re-defining the methodology for raw material hazard analysis at my workplace, we have plants in Canada and US. I have learnt that in the past we grouped our raw materials like a hazard assessment done for flavour was considered to be sufficient for all kinds of different flavours like strawberry, vanilla, etc and whether it was a natural or artificial. I am changing this but we make a lot of products and have around 1800 RM/PM suppliers, AFAIK we have a number of suppliers providing same product as well.

In order to keep it simple and appropriate, I intend to group my suppliers who provide same product as per our defined raw material characteristics thus 1 RM (from multiple suppliers) => 1 assessment response on RM Hazard analysis table i.e. separate responses for brilliant yellow sugar, coarse white sugar, fine white sugar. And let's say there are 4 suppliers for fine white sugar then reviewing their controls together against the potential hazards (under P/C/B) => applying risk methodology => justifying the decision of risk rating in gist =>  where required applying additional controls against a supplier.

Does it make sense? Please let me know your thoughts about it any possible consequences that you foresee like any scenarios leading us to deviate from FSMA / SQF/ BRC/ CFIA requirements?

I would have one matrix for the raw material and a separate one for the vendors----way to cumbersome to blend them together

There are flaws in putting ingredients in baskets the way you suggest

Eg   Vanilla

Natural vanilla is much more likely to be fraudulent (particularly right now more than doubles in $ in the last 12 months)  BUT fewer ingredients than artificial

Same goes for the risks with artificial colours

Thanks Scampi, I totally agree with you on this and therefore the intention of having a/any supplier against a particular RM/PM in my Hazard analysis table is to review and consider their (suppliers') applied controls in order to deliver us a safe product. All I am hoping from this is:-

a. we will have a clear view of actions from suppliers.

b. identify which supplier needs improvement by sharing best practices with them and applying additional controls over them to avoid any surprises later. furthermore in future, benchmarking them.

c. all materials will get grouped by specifications and not by generic names

For food fraud, since it is economically motivated and has impact on product quality rather than safety hence I created and implemented another matrix a couple of months back which does not consider food safety hazards and purely focuses on factors that contribute towards likelihood of occurrence & likelihood of detection.

I am sorry if in my initial post I didn't explain the intention well. Please review again and let me know your thought.

Thanks for your time

Food Fraud can be a safety issue. For example, adding lead in cinnamon powder. 

My first post on this site, btw. 

Dear Kconf,

I agree with your point food fraud does impact safety of product in some cases but the intention with which it is committed is economic motivated and not to cause harm. Thanks for helping me correct my statement.

Hi,

The best thing you can do is to simply conduct your hazard and risk analysis for each individual product. Grouping is fine but remember to list the individual items as well since some hazards might be specific to one ingredient only and could otherwise be overlooked.

This excercise will proivide you with a list of the hazards that need to be controlled for the product.

Then you use this to ask your suppliers for information on how they control these hazards. Let's say your ingredient is  wheat flour then you would want to know how they control salmonella, pesticide residues, mycotoxins, foreign material (not a complete list).

You assess if their risk management is sufficient. Based on your judgment you decide which controls you still need to implement and with which frequency.