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The need for food supply chain traceability, driven both by more stringent regulations and a demanding marketplace, has led manufacturers to rely on technologies and tools to help them track product through their respective part of the supply chain. Often, keeping tabs on products means keeping a virtual eye on them through advanced inspection technologies, which encompass a number of machines and complete systems. Eagle Product Inspection continually hones its food x-ray inspection capabilities to deliver better traceability technology, for products in raw, bulk, in-process and packaged or boxed states.
If it isn’t yet a given, traceability might be coming soon, at a time when food safety legislation and discerning consumers and purveyors are interested in knowing more about product sourcing and manufacturing. Just knowing that they can have food traceability is arguably as important as actually retrieving and using that information.
Capturing moments in time is pivotal for manufacturers to be able to fill in any product information gaps and protect against recalls or questions about food safety or food quality. By offering advanced inspection systems and software, Eagle Product Inspection helps customers capture and collect images and data. In friendly terms, consider these product snapshots a “family album” of sorts – your family of products and brands.
Here are some ways to build that album through traceability technologies:
- X-ray machines: Advanced x-ray inspection machines do more than foreign object detection. These systems can be considered multi-tasking tools that support food traceability through several stages of manufacturing. Food x-ray inspection can be used to prevent recalls by identifying and rejecting contaminated products and providing documentation that shows due diligence, from product reporting to machine maintenance and sanitation to continual machine testing. Eagle offers a range of x-ray machines for such purposes, from the new EPX100 for packaged products to the Bulk 540 PRO for bulk items.
- Fat analysis machines: Eagle’s FA3 series of fat analysis machines for red meat processors provide contaminant detection as well as fat analysis for fresh, frozen and hot-boned products.
- Eagle SimulTask™ PRO imaging software – including the newly-updated SimulTask™ 5 platform available on the new EPX100 system – offers superior x-ray inspection with automatic calibration, verification tools and vibrant, easy-to-access and simple-to-use displays. Users can quickly and easily access statistics and reports on inspected products.
- Eagle TraceServer™ software – tracks production through every stage providing you with due-diligence capabilities to enhance product traceability and meet internal quality standards. Users can consolidate all the data from Eagle machines across your lines into one central database.
Click here to read about how x-ray machines are multifaceted, providing a line of defense for food safety and, simultaneously, a line of traceability.
About the author:
George Humphries is Senior Technical Specialist for Eagle Product Inspection.
