1 reply to this topic

[matthewcc]

Hi all, I'm not sure if I've categorized this correctly, but this is on a hot topic that's going around recently at our company.

 

We need to make space in our warehouse by destroying old samples, including samples of finished goods, and the ones we want to destroy are all past their 'best by' date.

 

The question is about how we destroy them, and our practice has been to empty each finished good bottle and dump out the contents in the trash, even if they are past their 'best by' date. I'm sure this is not required by regulations, but to be safe against food fraud, this is what we've done. As you can imagine, this takes a lot of extra effort and labor hours to open up bottles to dump them out. What would your recommendation be for this--do the contents need to be dumped out, or can the full, sealed bottles be merely tossed in the trash?

 

We are following 21 CFR Part 111 in the United States for manufacturing dietary supplements, and we have NSF GMP and SQF certifications.

Matthew

[Setanta]

I would recommend documenting that you have destroyed them like you do out dated packaging material.

 

You can pour them down the drain, provided it doesn't annoy the municipality you send your water to be treated. We have a balance with our city water and have to be careful what we send down the drain. pH Balances, solids, smelly items, it all can affect city water. There is a story about a previous company in this location, they dumped some expired garlic oil down the drain and the whole town smelled garlicky for 2 days!  Ooops!

 

But you should make sure that the product cannot be re-purposed or used by someone dumpster-diving.