Comments on: Op Ed: Lessons Learned in Foreign Object Prevention

By: Erik Brainard

Erik Brainard — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 21:27:13 +0000

I appreciate Chris Hetherman’s perspective on foreign material prevention as an industry leader with over 22 years of experience in food manufacturing. ROI from x-ray technology has always been a difficult justification for many manufacturers but the cost of recalls are significant. Further, X-ray technology has evolved significantly from the early adopter experience when it was expensive, unreliable and not very accurate. Today x-ray inspection technology is a valuable and reliable tool with numerous inspection capabilities with one pass of the product. Specifically, most systems are used for improvement in metal detection, especially stainless steel, while adding detection of hard dense contaminants such as bone, glass, stone, rubber, cement, PVC and TFE even through metallic packaging and clipped products. I have also even seen detection of golf ball materials in potato products, sugar clumps in candy or soil clumps in harvested products. As noted by you, the technology also offers quality check advantages such as missing item by count, virtual checkweighing using mass measurement techniques and zone mass inspection offering fill level inspection in multi-zone packages all while virtually eliminating typical metal detector false reject concerns when the product varies in temperature. I believe an ROI can be calculated when taking into account the cost of losing the consumer, the cost of a recall and operational costs seen with metal detection. Thanks again for sharing your point of view and as a supplier of the technology, I envision industry and supplier collaboration will continue to improve food quality one plate a time.

By: Maidelyn Gergenti

Maidelyn Gergenti — Wed, 03 Jan 2018 03:31:53 +0000

This is an enlightening article in that I really had no idea that this technology was available to this extent and I hadn’t really given thought beyond the traditional food safety methods we have in place based on current regulatory guidelines. In addition and from my perspective as a consumer, these types of even minor incidents, such as a pit in a cherry (which actually happened to me) leaves me prejudice toward an entire brand name. I still have not revisited the product label and it’s been five years. It’s been over 15 years since I’ve drank a specific brand of creamer due to some unidentified black object that was in it. I doubt I’ll ever drink it again and I’m not shy to share the story.

By: F. Mazur

F. Mazur — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 21:37:44 +0000

Very enlightening piece – appreciated the insights, personal antedotes and Hetherman’s vision in terms of taking the industry standard to a necessary new level of customer protection & safety. Much to think about. Thanks for publishing this!

By: Chet Herman

Chet Herman — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 20:28:35 +0000

This article on foreign object prevention was very well written and hits the nail dead on the head when it comes to companies not willing to spend the extra money for technology for food safety unless it returns an ROI. I don’t understand why it takes companies like Walmart and KROGER to drive needed changes when it comes to food safety. It should just be common sense!!