Page 52 - FoodFocusThailand No.168 March 2020

SMART PRODUCTION

Some food manufacturers try to solve the problem by using an X-ray X-ray detector is currently one of the best choices for foreign matter
detector, instead of a metal detector, to inspect metal substances such detection in meat and poultry business as it can effectively address
as needle tips and knife blade chips in raw meat. As a result, the X-ray the needs of food manufacturers through a modern technology that
detector can efficiently detect small needles regardless of where they offers an X-ray generator with a power-saving feature, a longer life,
are located or how they are positioned, nor does the moisture in raw and a detector array with 3 diode pitch values of 0.4, 0.8, and 1.5 mm.
meat affect the detection efficiency. The machine can even successfully (also known as Adaptive Array Technology), thus enhancing the
scan a 17 kilograms package of raw meat. More importantly, the X-ray efficiency in metal detection of up to 0.3 mm. in size and enabling the
detector can drastically save time in production process, thus resulting detection of non-metal foreign matter such as glass, rock, hard bone,
in lower production costs. high-density plastic, and rubber. An X-ray detector also offers user-
Some other food producers, on the other hand, may regard the X-ray friendly program, simple parameter setting, and resupply rate
detector as too excessive an investment. However, most manufacturers monitoring program that can check for missing, damaged, or broken
may end up wasting a lot of time dealing with the complexity of metal products. It can simultaneously count and quality-check packaging in
detector parameter setting to match the specific requirements of each one go. In addition, it also features PVS (Performance Verification
product, thus likely resulting in bottlenecked manufacturing processes System), operation log recording system, and product sorting system
that may consequently force them to increase the number of metal that can perfectly filter out potentially subpar products in accordance
detectors and workers to make up for lost productivity. If the costs of with the HACCP and BRC standard requirements.
these two detector types are taken into consideration, one will see that
the X-ray detector can help reduce production lead time and boost
confidence in product quality.

Foreign matter contamination in meat and poultry is increasingly becoming a growing problem for consumers.
Such issue arises from several factors in quality control of food product, ranging from raw material selection
and manufacturing processes in factory to product storage and distribution. The foreign matters frequently
detected during quality control process of raw material are, for example, tiny broken syringe tips stuck in raw
meat. Such contaminating matters are very hard to detect by human eyes. Even with a metal detector, these
issues continuously persist due to the presence of moisture in raw meat, which is an important obstacle that
greatly complicates the parameter setting of a metal detector and leads to inefficient and mostly unsuccessful
detection of syringe tips and knife blade chips.

Contaminated Substance Problems

in Meat and Poultry

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