Extending shelf life with micro and sensory evaluation
Hey all,
A customer of ours is asking us to extend a shelf life on one of the products (carob chips). We typically do not do this and ask the customer to have it done on their own.
Long story short - they ordered. Never paid or arranged pickup. Now they want a fresher lot. We are looking to extend it instead.
Is it ok to do it on our own? Any legal issues?
Hi kconf,
If this is your own product and not a customer branded product then it is up to you what shelf life you put on your product. Normally I would expect to see a contract or specification which includes shelf life and minimum life into customer, does one exist?
Also, it would be interesting to know what is the shelf life and how much are you extending it by?
I am assuming that the only thing restricting the shelf life limits on this product are quality based, so sensory evaluation?
The expectation is that you have validated your product’s shelf life and have a system of ongoing verification of the shelf life. Do you have records supporting the declared shelf life and the proposed extended shelf life?
Kind regards,
Tony
Thanks Tony.
Our spec sheet says 12 months of shelf life. It is our own product.
You are correct. Only sensory evaluation. AFAIK there are no records supporting the extended shelf life. How does it work?
Hi kconf,
I would kick off some extended shelf life testing and also look at the products at end of life and take a view if there is in fact 'more life' in the product or if you should not be considering extending the product shelf life.
What is the proposed extended shelf life? I don't see a couple of months as likely to be a problem but would prefer to have records to demonstrate that is the case. For now at a minimum you should be retaining samples from the batches you are extending so that you can check them if necessary.
Kind regards,
Tony
What I've found with some suppliers is if there is not likely to be a food safety risk to extension is that they push it back on the customer. I.e. "we have tested this organoleptically and can extend by x months without any food safety risk but recommend you do your own organoleptic testing in your product." You might even want to word it more strongly as if they have complaints later, you don't really want them on your doorstep.
Ultimately this is their fault but I wouldn't be underhand about it. In this situation it wouldn't be right to extend the ingredient without their awareness that its been extended. They may not like that but ultimately trying to hide it will cause you issues.
After all, while this is their fault, who wasn't looking at the fact they'd not picked it up and questioning it your end and also cycling that stock with fresher stock until you had answers?