Advances in analytical technologies have resulted in the continued development of faster more efficient analytical methods. New test systems are coming onto the market and little is known about their practical application for and by industry.
Through well defined practical studies, this project is addressing some important microbiological issues affecting the food industry. This RSS covers the assessment of a method for the detection of C. botulinum neurotoxin types B and E.
High pressure processing, as currently used commercially, is a non-thermal pasteurisation process. It is an excellent
process for preserving the ´fresh–like´ characteristics of foods. Unfortunately, bacterial spores are very resistant to commercially
achievable pressures so products currently on the market tend to be chilled and/or contain additional preservation hurdles that have
been demonstrated to prevent the growth of psychrotophic strains of Clostridium botulinum.
At Campden, we have an EPSI High pressure system with a 700ml capacity on site for lab scale validation and product suitability trials.
Find out more by watching Andrew Bosman, Campden BRI Process Engineer in the Production and Processing Research Department.
Emerging technologies such as high-pressure processing (HPP) are now well established for achieving products with 'fresh' like properties, but with a shelf life of weeks or months rather than days. But more recently, technologies such as HPP and power ultrasound are also being used to change the properties of foods, to give an improved or novel product.
The focus for this project will be on emerging technologies for improving quality and value and will conduct feasibility studies on commercially relevant emerging technologies. The project will inform members about additional new technologies through the new technologies bulletins, feasibility studies and desk-based reviews.
From 1 October 2021 in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, any food that is prepacked for direct sale (PPDS) must have labelling that displays the name of the product as well as the full list of ingredients with the allergens emphasised. This new law is colloquially known as Natasha’s Law. To explain the changes, Helen Arrowsmith, Principal Food Adviser and Allergen Specialist at Campden BRI takes us through the legislation and helps you decide whether it applies to you and your products.
Cases of food-induced anaphylaxis, at times resulting in fatalities, highlight the importance of allergen management in the food and drink industry – making this not only a current hot topic, but also one that the sector will continue to deal with long term.
Anton Alldrick and Helen Arrowsmith discuss aspects of allergen reference doses and action levels, and how they can they can be used to determine whether there a need or justification for precautionary labelling of products.
In harmonised EU legislation (the Food Information to Consumers Regulation (EU) No. 1169/2011 - FIC), which has been retained into UK law since EU exit at the end of 2020, there are 14 substances or products causing allergies or intolerances that must be labelled on food and drink packages if they have been deliberately included as an ingredient or are contained as part of a compound ingredient or processing aid that is deliberately added to a food.
Dealing with food allergens can be challenging – but our teams at Campden BRI can help. We offer a range of services to support your allergen management needs including testing, training, publications and consultancy and support in allergen management, legislation and labelling. These services can be customised to your requirements.
Increasing consumer demand for more sustainable packaging, plant-based food, fewer additives, less salt, sugar or
fat and with added health benefits while still retaining desirable sensory properties, are all factors that are leading to the
reformulation of existing or the creation of new products. However, shelf life stability of these new or reformulated products may
be difficult to predict.
In this webinar, Gail Betts, Microbiological Quality and Safety Lead and Peter Burgess, Head of the Consumer and Sensory Sciences
Department at Campden BRI discuss how Campden BRI’s multidisciplinary team help clients to design trials that optimize product quality
and determine shelf life. Through case studies, they will discuss our holistic approach involving microbiological, chemical testing,
physical testing and sensory consumer analysis to guide clients in determining the shelf of a new or existing product.
A recent poll by the Food Standards Agency revealed that 44% of adults view ‘use by’ dates as a ‘useful guide’ – not realising the potential health risks of getting food poisoning, which could make them or their family seriously ill.
A better understanding of key spoilage bacteria is crucial to better control contamination and microbial spoilage of foods.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations estimates that if food waste was a country, it would be the third-highest emitter of greenhouse gases after the US and China. Alarmed? With tonnes of food wasted in the UK each year, you’re right to be.
Campden BRI can help to create winning products through applied sensory solutions such as; sensory testing, innovation and insights, sensory training and consumer testing.
Bertrand Emond, Culture Excellence Lead at Campden BRI, gives us some an update on what has been happening over the past year with safety and quality culture. He also introduces how Campden BRI can support you in this very important area and help you put together robust action plans to drive and sustain positive behaviours.
In this video Bertrand Emond talks about the new requirements for food safety culture in Issue 8 of the BRC Global Standard for Food Safety. He talks about the importance of food safety culture, how you can implement food culture and what can you do to meet the requirements in Issue 8 of BRC.
The importance of food safety culture has become increasingly recognised in the past few years, as has the role of psychology and the importance of behaviour-based approaches to food safety management. Within the food industry, food safety culture can be described as the “prevailing attitudes, values and practices related to food safety that are taught, directly and indirectly, to new employees” (Taylor, 2011). Some of these are easy to observe, such as the facilities and equipment, posters and paperwork, and the visible behaviours of staff. However, some are harder to see.
The Culture Excellence Program is a unique solution for the measurement, analysis and improvement of safety and quality culture. Culture Excellence is the result of over 16 years of academic research and industry experience. It is used by food clients of all types including manufacturing, retail and food service around the world to understand and improve their food safety and quality culture.
Ensuring the safety of food products for consumers is a key goal of a food safety culture, and food companies are increasingly challenged to manage a robust food safety culture that consistently delivers safe food.
Now in its sixth year, Campden BRI in partnership with Taylor Shannon International (TSI), delivered the Safety and Quality Culture Excellence seminar suite to an online audience on the 3, 7 and 16 December 2020.
On September 25, 2020, the Codex Alimentarius Commission adopted the revised Code of Practice (General Principles of Food Hygiene (CXC 1-1969) and its HACCP annex). In this talk, Andrew Collins, Food Safety Management Systems Lead at Campden BRI, discusses some of the changes that may impact your food business.
Ensuring factories are cleaned and disinfected effectively is a fundamental prerequisite for the safe production of food and drinks. This involves decisions on when to clean, how to clean and what chemicals to use to remove physical, chemical and microbiological contaminants.
Assure the safety of your food products by adopting HACCP, with the help of the latest edition of Campden BRI's long-established practical guide.
Obtain the knowledge and skills to design, implement and verify food safety management systems based upon the Codex HACCP principles. A highly interactive online course, experienced tutors will provide practical guidance with much emphasis on case studies and group exercises.
Hygienic design has been a buzzword for a number of years in the food and drink industries. Unfortunately, new
installations are still appearing with equipment that is inappropriate from the perspectives of hygienic design and ease of cleaning.
Either the hygienic design requirements specifications have not been particularly stringent, or the responsible businesses have not
focused on hygienic design in planning. This does not mean that the equipment is unusable, but it may, for example, create difficulties
in optimising the cleaning of a facility.
In this video, Nigel Blitz, Food Safety Management Systems Specialist at Campden BRI, explains what hygienic design is, what does it
cover and why is it important for your business. He also takes us through the top five areas for non-conformances for BRC Global
Standard for Food Safety Issue 8.
Hygiene procedures are designed to remove debris and contamination from a previous production run and sanitise equipment prior to starting the next run. Manufacturers must ensure that the established cleaning and sanitation procedures reduce the microbiological, allergenic and residual products to satisfactory level.
Good hygiene starts with design – for food premises and equipment. The flow of raw materials, ingredients, packaging, people and utilities through a food area can markedly reduce or increase the risks of product contamination.
Thorough cleaning is a crucial prerequisite to sound hygienic conditions in any food manufacturing environment. Cleaning protocols must be validated in order to provide assurance that they do, in fact, serve their purpose: to clean the surfaces to a level that avoids the possibility of cross-contamination.
The Microscopy team at Campden BRI offers a comprehensive range of analytical techniques to support its customers.
From foreign body identification, troubleshooting problems with food packaging materials, to the investigation and screening of a
wide range of samples, some of them non-food materials, the team carries out a wide range of projects.
Watch some examples of our microscopes in action and techniques which allow us to do our investigative work.
Microscopy analysis is essential to gain an understanding of the microstructure or nanostructure of materials, chemicals or products. Data from microscopy analysis is important to progressing your research and product development programmes, resolving contamination issues in manufacturing or other parts of the supply chain. From small scale screening, investigations, bespoke analysis or even microplastics, microscopy may be able to help at various points along your production process.
After finding grey ‘spotting’ on the top of their pies, a client was forced to halt an entire production line. The spots were not consistent in size or shape but were found to be affecting a significant number of pies, making them unsellable.
A client was experiencing leaking beverage cans; it had been noted that pinholes were forming on the base of the cans. This issue had been reported over multiple batches stored in the usual manner. The client had requested to know if the pinholes were forming from an internal reaction or external source.
The Microscopy section uses a comprehensive range of techniques to carry out packaging investigations, e.g. the identification, characterisation and thickness of layers in multi-laminate films, as well as looking at delamination and other issues.
Did you know that Campden BRI has been for over 100 years at the forefront of food and drink thermal processing?
Thermal processing is at the very centre of food preservation and is one of the most well-known and practiced areas of food
manufacturing. There is today an extensive and ever-growing range of food products preserved by means of thermal technologies.
In this video, Gary Tucker, Research Follow, at Campden BRI, takes you through the different types of thermal process ranging from
full sterilisation to milder pasteurisation heat treatments but also find out with him about the technological and microbiological
discovery of Campden BRI in this field over the year, and Campden BRI implication in the development of guidelines for the industry.
From thermal processing validation, consultancy or training, find out with David Whittaker, thermal processing specialist, how Campden BRI, as an independent third-party expert, can provide you, your customers and accreditation bodies, assurance in your processing operations, and process validation procedures. Also discover in this video, our future plan to ensure Campden BRI remain at the forefront of thermal processing.
David Whittaker covers the methods we use to build the evidence that allows us to determine whether a thermal process will deliver a safely processed product. This includes consideration of the variables that help create the ‘worst-case scenario’ when performing a thermal process validation.
In this whiteboard presentation, David covers how we interpret and use the results from a validation study to optimise a thermal process. Thermal process optimisation preserves a product’s nutritional and sensory attributes, which is very important for quality and consumer acceptance.
The beauty of continuous thermal processing is that it allows a large quantity of product to be processed in a short time. It is also possible to minimise unwanted chemical changes if the product is processed at the highest possible temperature for the shortest time needed to achieve the required lethality.
Campden BRI offers professional support to ensure your thermal processes consistently produce safe products. Our team holds extensive experience in supporting processors within the UK and around the world regularly working with some of the world’s largest food and drinks companies so when you come to us, you know you are in safe hands.
This one-day online course is inspired by our prestigious 4-day ‘canning’ course and aims to provide a clear overview of the essentials of thermal processing with a focus on food-safety. The sessions offer a technical overview and practical advice for those involved with the development, monitoring and validation of an ‘in-pack’ thermal process using a retort.
In this video Greg Jones discusses the applications of AMP to the food and drink industry, such as factory hygiene, traceability, authenticity and shelf life.
In this whiteboard presentation, Linda Everis - principal research officer for microbiology safety and spoilage, discusses how to set a shelf life.
Food analysis looks at the sensory, chemical, microbiological and physical properties of food and drink, and is an important part of quality assurance, regulatory compliance and product development.
Do you struggle to demonstrate control of Listeria to customers and enforcement authorities? You’re not alone. Find out how we’re helping the industry with this issue.
You’ve likely heard of the UK’s large food poisoning issue associated with Salmonella enteritidis. It’s linked to certain retailer-sold breaded chicken products (including chicken bites and nuggets), caused almost 500 cases of food poisoning and still ongoing as of March 2021.
Microbiological challenge testing is the process of deliberately inoculating a food or drink with a relevant microorganism(s) to determine how they are affected by an antimicrobial process. The test design is critical.
With extensive knowledge and understanding of all aspects of food chemistry and biochemistry, Campden BRI is ideally placed to help you with whatever issues you face, from demonstrating that the food is what it says it is, through to understanding nutrient content
As you’d expect, extending the shelf-life of fish and seafood has always been a challenge. The delicate nature of the product combined with its rapid sensory deterioration means that preservation methods ideally need to be gentle and applied at the very moment the catch is pulled from the water.
The last couple of decades have seen significant growth in the number of highly visual approaches to identifying,
assessing, recording, and managing risk. The arguable chief amongst these new visualised risk management approaches is BowTie. A
straightforward, logical, barrier-based risk visualisation medium that has found itself on the rapid ascent in the last five to ten
years.
In this part 1 video, Andrew Collins, Food Safety Management Systems Management Lead at Campden BRI and Alistair Cowin, Implementation
Consultant at CGE Risk explain us what is bowtie method and why this risk assessment tool should be used by any business involved in
the food and drink industry. Andrew and Collins also demonstrate how bowtie diagrams easily helps communicate risks by making them
visual but also how this risk management method contribute to a good safety culture.
The part 1 video helped us understand what BowTie method is and how the BowTie diagram helps visualise the risk businesses are dealing with in one understandable picture. In this part 2 video, Andrew Collins, Food Safety Management Systems Management Lead at Campden BRI and Alistair Cowin, Implementation Consultant at CGE Risk, discuss in more details how to build a BowTie diagram to assess risk in your business.
The previous videos help you understand what bowtie method is, how it is structured with its 8 component parts and how it might look in a food and drink business situation. However, there are a lot more that this method can be used for. In this part 3 video, Andrew Collins, Food Safety Management Systems Management Lead at Campden BRI and Alistair Cowin, Implementation Consultant at CGE Risk, explain how different management systems can be linked to your bowtie diagram. Andrew and Alistair also discuss how bowtie diagrams help promote relevant organisational improvements and highlight areas where organisational control is weak.
Listeriosis is a serious foodborne disease and causes severe health complications to people every year.
To support the industry with this safety challenge, Campden BRI Hungary in association with the Hungarian deep freezing and canning
industry has developed a comprehensive, voluntary, and audited Listeria Management Plan. Find out in this short video how
this management plan has been design to form part of your safety assurance program, to give you an independent third-party assessment,
and provide you with evidence that you have implemented all appropriate controls to limit the risk of Listeria Monocytogenes.
