Whether you employ analytical instrumentation for quality or food safety or both, the type of analytical instrumentation and testing will vary based on where it’s employed in the food process. If quality is a concern halfway through the process, you’ll need fast, onsite instrumentation (possibly online or inline) and test kits. When checking quality and/or food safety at the end of the line, you may find that the speed of results may not be as important as the instrumentation’s ability to measure constituents or potential contamination. Besides just getting results, it has to be accurate—and getting and interpreting these results shouldn’t require the expertise of three PhDs.
Without the right instrumentation in the right place, some processors don’t really know what factors determine the quality of their products until they’re finished. Then it’s too late, and a batch is wasted. Drew Lambert, Food Technology Corporation technical services manager, recalls a sticky problem that a candy company recently encountered. While it wasn’t a safety issue, it was a major quality issue that affected both the end product and the processing method. The processor had no way of knowing how a raw ingredient was going to behave until it started making product. The major issue was how the product held its shape. If it was too dry, it crumbled; too wet, and it flattened out on the conveyor.