Magnet Sensitivity

Hi, we are producing bird seeds and in the process of BRCGS Food Safety implementation. Please recommend on the typical monitoring for these please because our manufacture says they don't know the sensitivity of the inline magnets.

The manufacturer can get their magnets gauss tested and they should to ensure they maintain efficacy.

I'd say "not good enough...".

Here's one company:  Magnet Testing UK - Greenwood Magnetics

And another:  Magnet Validation Services for Industrial Safety

Not SA based but I'm sure if you google or ask other people in the industry there, they will know a contact.

The magnets should have been given with a certificate stating their pull strength.  The manufacturer should have a minimum standard on that.  But if they're old, and they weren't bought as "food magnets" then you're probably stuck in a less than ideal spot.

When I ran in a spice plant, we would do magnet checks every two hours:  inspecting that they were still in place, removing debris from them and determining whether there was anything caught on them to indicate a problem.  We would document a pull strength test once a year to verify the magnets hadn't lost an unacceptable amount of pull since the prior year (they do slowly deteriorate).  The company had a 'minimum' strength that a magnet had to meet, and honestly I don't know where they got the number from, but it was needed to show our auditors what minimum baseline would require us to replace the magnet.