The effect of food processing on
foreign bodies - a case study with
in-container heat processing

Understand how in-container heat processing of foreign bodies in food can influence their identification and how this can be used to help ascertain the point of contamination.

Foreign body contamination is of great concern to food companies. A foreign body incident can jeopardise consumer health, result in prosecution and significantly undermine a company's reputation. Identifying the precise nature of the foreign body, and the stage of the process at which the contamination arose, is often essential in preventing recurrences. For processed foods, however, these tasks are made all the more difficult because processing itself affects different foreign bodies in different ways.

Using in-container processing in wet foods as a case study, this review describes the effects of heat treatment on foreign bodies as diverse as metal, glass, plastic, wood, textiles, pharmaceutical tablets and capsules, and insects. Photographs are used extensively to compare the foreign bodies before and after processing. For each material, clear conclusions are presented on how the heat process does or does not affect the contaminant and the significance of this for foreign body identification.

Contents:

• Introduction
• Methods
• Insects and other invertebrates
• Metal samples (e.g. stainless steel, brass, aluminium, iron, copper)
• Tablets and capsules
• Plastics (e.g. polystyrene, PVC, nylon and Perspex)
• Wood samples (e.g. cork, fibreboard, plywood, pine, oak)
• Textiles (e.g. cotton, linen, silk)
• Glass and miscellaneous items
• Conclusions

Softcover - 89 pages