Addressing Food Safety Guidelines: Compliance in Frozen Food Production
Following food safety guidelines is critical for keeping products safe for consumers and production safe for employees. However, there are risks and hazards associated with frozen food production, which can endanger employee and consumer safety.
Compliance in frozen food production is obviously necessary for good business practices, yet, how can your company do so with evolving food safety risks? In a fast-paced industry, how can frozen food labels effectively monitor and address food safety risks?
Even beyond employee hygiene and safe ingredients, there are still food safety hazards that pose a risk to both consumers and employees. Here, we’ll review these hazards, as well as how to develop a food safety plan and follow food safety management with the latest tools available to the frozen food industry. At Quantum, we believe that properly addressing these hazards starts with understanding their root causes.
Food Safety Hazards
There are many food safety hazards including microbiological, chemical, and physical hazards in the frozen food industry. Each presents its own danger to both employee and consumer health. This is why it’s important to develop and follow your brand’s food safety guidelines.
Food safety hazards can risk the quality of your products, especially if your team isn’t well trained and the proper precautions aren’t taken. Microbes can cause foodborne illnesses. Chemical hazards like cleaning solutions or metals are also food safety hazards, posing a risk to consumer safety. Physical hazards to frozen meals include hair from employees and glass and metal from equipment. Physical hazards to employee health include dangerous food equipment that increases the risk of cuts, burns, or amputations, which also endangers safety. These risks can be complex, but luckily, there are solutions that brands can implement to minimize them.
Because these hazards are prevalent, it’s important to have safety guidelines that minimize these risks as much as possible. Training employees and having food production equipment that is easy to clean and maintain is key in preventing foodborne illnesses and other hazards to food safety. Your brand doesn’t need to lose the battle against microbiological, chemical, and physical food safety hazards. Your brand needs a food safety plan that outlines how your team can eliminate these hazards while remaining productive. With a plan in place, your brand can proactively address these hazards. Let’s now take a look at what your leadership can include in its food safety plan.
Developing a Food Safety Plan
Developing a food safety plan can help your company practice food safety while manufacturing its products. At Quantum, we recommend that a food safety plan includes training employees, following CDC guidelines regarding food safety, and implementing automation where possible.
Train Employees
Food safety starts with training employees, which should be the start of any food safety plan. Training employees in proper hygiene and food handling techniques can keep the risk of foodborne illnesses low. This training can improve your brand’s products and your overall business practices. In addition to food hygiene, your food safety plan should include how to operate your brand’s food equipment to prevent employee injuries.
Follow CDC Guidelines
Other food safety guidelines to follow are the CDC’s “Clean, Separate, Cook, and Chill” steps to your food safety guidelines where applicable. While food manufacturing processes may seem different between brands, these four steps are important to maintain a clean manufacturing process. Cleaning hands and equipment is key to keeping a safe food manufacturing environment. Separating ingredients is crucial to avoid cross-contamination, such as with meats and other ingredients. Ensuring that your cooked ingredients are brought to the right temperature before freezing is also important for the quality of your frozen meal. And lastly, freezing your products as soon as possible to the right temperature maintains their quality and prevents spoiling.
Implement Automation
Implementing automation is also a part of successful food safety guidelines. While increasing productivity and quality, automating your frozen food manufacturing processes improves food safety. Automation upgrades meal assembly lines in more ways than one, and any brand can implement automated equipment to improve production and food safety without extra effort.
Training employees, following federal recommendations, and implementing automation are effective ways of improving food safety. At Quantum, we’re committed to making food safety management as effortless as possible, offering automation as a single solution to many hazards. With Quantum automation, your company can easily streamline its food safety management.
Food Safety Management and Quantum Automation
Automation simplifies food safety management on many different levels. Finding a simple solution that addresses multiple issues streamlines efforts when following food safety guidelines. Luckily, automating as much of your frozen food production as possible not only increases productivity but also greatly improves food safety.
The Quantum Difference
Quantum is the industry leader in automated food equipment, and we’ve designed our machinery to both simplify and improve food safety in frozen food production through washdown compatibility, high ingredient turnover, and easy maintenance. In addition to easy maintenance and cleaning, Quantum equipment is also built to prevent employee injuries like cuts and amputations. Traditionally, automated food equipment has blades and other sharp components that can lead to such injuries. However, we’ve designed Quantum equipment to include casings and guards to minimize injuries, which further improves both employee and overall food safety.
With Quantum’s automated food equipment, your brand can easily implement and maintain food safety practices to ensure quality for your customers without additional effort. Our automated technology brings both food production and food safety into the future.
Improve Your Food Safety With Quantum
Quantum Technical Services is dedicated to improving food safety in frozen food production. Our state-of-the-art designs allow brands to keep their assembly lines clean without unnecessary effort. With washdown designs and minimized staff contact, Quantum equipment makes following food safety guidelines exceptionally simple. Contact our team today to improve your frozen food label’s food safety as soon as possible.