Optimal Quality Assurance (QA) of food and beverage products will always be the cornerstone of consumer health, brand integrity and commercial viability.
Whether compliance with the minimum market QA requirements remains an internal responsibility or is contracted out to institutional hygiene service providers, the integrity of the product on the shelf and consumer satisfaction and wellbeing remains the responsibility of the manufacturing facility.
Despite global economic constraints and investments in new product development and packaging enhancements to address evolving consumer behaviours, minimum quality assurance remains an immutable requirement for both trusting consumers and product suppliers alike.
So what is being measured in order to quality assure products before they are destined for the consumer trade? Are current QA protocols and testing profiles adequate to address the challenges of the modern production facility and specifically the hidden sources of contamination from unseen biofilms?
Revisiting the guiding principles of the HACCP and GMP systems, the ubiquitous presence of microbial biofilms in water supply systems must reflect as a hazard in quality assurance programs. Critical control points for the detection and monitoring of the presence and extent of biofilms must be identified with critical limits established. The verification of appropriate corrective actions thereafter reinforces the integrity of the QA process and assures consumer safety and satisfaction.
However, how does one reliably detect and monitor an unseen and erratic hazard within the system?
Conventional testing practices require the sampling of water systems either for further microbial culture and enumeration or for the ‘rapid’ detection of the presence of microbial DNA.
Microbes associated with biofilms are universally recognised to differ significantly from free living bacteria. This is primarily due to their altered metabolic state, capacity to withstand adverse environmental conditions and their reproductive profile.
The vast bulk of biofilms is comprised of extracellular compounds (‘slime’) of which the majority consists of polysaccharides (carbohydrate based compounds). Biofilms shed portions of this ‘slime’ layer into passing water streams in an unpredictable manner and reliance on microbiological and rapid DNA testing of largely non-representative samples is compromised by a significant dilution effect.
Instead of focusing the tests for water quality and by direct implication, biofilm presence on laboratory culture techniques or microbial DNA detection, it is proposed that a greater sensitivity to microbe detection would be achieved by testing for the relatively larger concentrations of the carbohydrate biofilm matrix in the water sample.
Direct detection of this carbohydrate component or ‘footprint’ of the biofilm slime layer, is a substantially more representative and significantly more reliable measure to predict the presence of contaminating microbes.
Progressively enhanced QA vigilance requires a testing capacity for the detection of product residues and verification of equipment cleaning procedures, the exclusion of potential food allergens and the detection of biofilm contamination in water supply systems.
Carbotect™ is a rapid and reliable water diagnostic test that proactively addresses these broad requirements.
Carbotect™ is a proprietary, colour based, water quality assurance test that offers an immediate result in terms of the cleaning efficacy in food and beverage factories. This allows for an immediate remedial intervention on the factory floor where incomplete cleaning or substandard water quality would adversely impact upon final product quality, consumer safety and commercial shelf life.
Carbotect™ is sensitive to ultra-low levels of organic contaminants and is used to detect the carbohydrate compounds associated with microbial biofilm in enclosed water supply systems
Carbotect™ detects a broad spectrum of organic compounds and thus has the added capacity to detect the presence of food allergen residues in processing equipment. This permits the implementation of proactive responses before further products destined for high risk, susceptible consumers are inadvertently contaminated.
Carbotect™ is positioned as a proactive hygiene management tool to detect organic residues and hence microbial nutrients before the production system develops the consequential microbial contamination.
Carbotect™ is a simple, low-skills based test that does not require a CAPEX budget and offers a significant enhancement to existing QA programs. It is ideally suited to production facilities that do not have ready access to competent laboratory facilities on a continuous basis.
Carbotect™ is a purposely disruptive diagnostic technology and is specifically positioned as a proactive monitoring tool for future microbial contamination and food spoilage.
Carbotect™ seeks to drive the paradigm shift of conventional quality assurance standards away from the current, largely reactive platform, to one that embraces pre-emptive interventions that safeguard consumer well-being, food, beverage and water security.
As a cost effective and user friendly test, Carbotect™ is a sentinel indicator of potential microbial contamination before it becomes established. It can also be backward integrated throughout the raw material supply chain and will provide an indispensable adjunct tool to enhance overall quality assurance throughout the entirety of the production process. This promotes a more holistic approach to minimum quality assurance requirements and to underwrite product integrity, commercial viability, consumer safety and brand loyalty.
https://www.carbotect.com
