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The goal of the directive was for pharma to consistently get batches right, with less FDA oversight, less reliance on post-production quality inspection and less testing. While the right dose with the right efficacy is important, pharma has derived another major benefit from the directive-control.
PAT can also be successfully applied to a number of food and beverage processes, even packaging, says Fred Discenzo, manager, diagnostics & sensors at Rockwell Automation Advanced Technology Laboratory. These include any fermentation process-cheese, beer, wine, yogurt-and others like tomato production, pizza sauce and ketchup. Major food and beverage processors are already using PAT to produce more on-spec product with less waste, scrap and energy consumption-at relatively low costs.
While sophisticated electrochemical sensors are becoming available to evaluate the chemistry of a food product, less-sophisticated devices with the right software algorithms can go a long way into implementing PAT in a process, says Discenzo. Some food processors are using common sensors that measure temperature, level and moisture to obtain much of the data for software algorithms to get processes under control, running at peak efficiency.
Fred Discenzo can be reached at fmdiscenzo@ra.rockwell.com or 440-646-7325.
The Food Defense Strategy Exchange (FDSE) is a forum for food defense professionals to interact and share their knowledge and experiences. At the most recent FDSE, a poll of attendees revealed that approximately two-thirds were either re-evaluating their existing food defense plan, or implementing new food defense plans. In this podcast, Don Hsieh, Director of Commercial and Industrial Marketing at Tyco Integrated Security, discusses this topic and other findings from the exchange, and offers some best practices to proactively protect a company’s brand from food adulteration.
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