The growing role of inspection technology in ensuring dairy safety and quality
For many years now, the dairy industry has remained within the top three biggest sectors in the food industry across most of Europe. Within the UK alone, a staggering 15 billion litres of milk are produced every year and the industry is worth $5.7 billion at wholesale level.1 With such vast numbers involved, the slightest lapse in food safety could be catastrophic.
Ensuring stringent food safety is of course of the utmost priority across every stage of dairy production. In terms of inspection, equipment such as metal detection is standard on a dairy line. But the variety of dairy products and the various transformational stages they pass through to create a finished product – be it yoghurt, cheese or butter – is enormous. So there are many areas that need to be subjected to careful inspection along the way. Metal detection alone is not sufficient to fully assess the product at each stage.
Whether a dairy business is a small to medium enterprise or a large multinational, the requirement for food safety is the same. However the cost of detection equipment can be prohibitive. Fortunately, the cost of x-ray inspection has come down significantly over the last decade and this is a technology which can be used in a number of different ways and with high accuracy along several stages of a dairy production line.
Inspection through the different stages of dairy production
In the earlier stages of production, the risk of physical contamination can be present from the equipment used. Paddles, agitators and conveyors can at times break or begin to disintegrate, allowing fragments to get into the food. As well as this, where there is human intervention, there is the risk of contaminants potentially entering the line. Because most dairy products are still in liquid form at this stage, any foreign bodies quickly sink to the bottom and cannot be easily seen. So X-Ray inspection can be crucial at this stage.
However it’s not always as straightforward as passing the product through an x-ray inspection machine. Irregular or non-homogenous products such as grated cheese, for example, can be challenging to examine. With a traditional single energy Xray system, the “busy” image created cannot always be accurately assessed with std algorithms in order to find any contaminants. In these cases, a dual energy x-ray can be used. A dual energy system creates 2 different x-ray spectra of high and low energy levels. By comparing the absorption ratios of these two spectra it is possible to see what is included in the image in much greater detail and therefore detect if any contaminants might be present.
Moving on to later stages of the production line, it is often the case be that a dairy product has been packaged within a metallised container. Or perhaps a plastic tub with a foil lid, such as a pot of yoghurt. In these cases, inspecting the product using a metal detector is not possible so, again, this is where x-ray technology can be used to see through the packaging.
Problems with giveaways and irregular portioning
In terms of the finished product, once everything has been produced, inspected and packaged, there are still ways in which x-ray inspection technology can make a significant impact on a dairy business. Side shooter x-rays for example can be used to measure the fill level in a carton or pot of liquid, to ensure that the correct amount of product is being decanted into each pack. Equipment settings can be optimised accordingly, so customers will get exactly what they pay for each time. Underfilling is legally a big no-no, but overfilling even by tiny amounts will quickly add up and amount to significant giveaways over time. All these quality checks can be done simultaneously whilst checking there are no contaminants in the product.
Similarly, producers of irregular products such as cheeses with naturally occurring holes like Emmental and Jarlsberg can benefit from the use of inspection equipment. X-ray technology can be used to ensure the correct weight per slice, taking into account any holes and allowing operators to adjust the machine parameters as needed during production. So as well as detection of contaminants, x-ray inspection has a range of other applications which can actually considerably impact your bottom line by maintaining uniformity and preventing costly giveaways.
What to look out for
Machines do of course need to have a very high degree of hygienic design to prevent them posing a contamination risk themselves. High quality machines should be made with antibacterial surfaces. In terms of physical build quality, it’s also advisable to look out for machinery that’s been designed in such a way that if water were to spill onto it, it can’t seep or drip onto the product.
X-ray detection continues to be a growing field in the dairy industry. Beyond food safety and contaminant detection, it is increasingly becoming the primary detection technology for ensuring quality and correct portioning of products. No matter what the product, the complexities of production and the risks to food safety are such that there are many areas along any dairy line that need to be stringently managed. High quality vision inspection technology can have a huge impact here, preventing risk to consumers, your reputation and your bottom line.
For more information visit https://www.anritsu.com/en-gb/product-inspection