instore - March 2018 - 44

FOOD SAFETY

Photo above: ©Bozena Fulawka - stock.adobe.com; below: Hygenia

swab design and classic lateral flow technology. The sample swab holds pre-measured, ready-to-use buffer. Once an area is
swabbed, the device is activated with a snap
and squeeze action and the sample is then
poured onto the lateral flow cassette.
If a sample contains five parts per million
or more of gluten, a red line appears on the
cassette.

"The sanitation processes that
companies have in place these days
are a lot more extreme than they
were before."
FERNANDO MORA, HYGIENA

"That's the easiest way to do something like
that and we can do it because these are residue tests and not product tests," Mora says.
"If it's a product test, it's more of a per-volume test, which gets a lot more difficult to
interpret. And this helps in covering all potential areas where there could be risk.
"This really is a pretty simple, first-level kind
of step. It's not a product test or a really indepth test. Our products are meant to be
used at the sanitation level to ensure that
you're starting with, literally, a clean slate
before a product contacts a surface."
Tests like this become even more important
in today's climate, Mora says, where allergens are on the minds of many consumers.
Commissaries and bakeries are spending
much more time and money ensuring the
food they bill as allergen-free really is.
"The sanitation processes that companies

44 * MARCH 2018 * commissary INSIDER

have in place these days are a lot more extreme than they were before. Not only are
they testing the product themselves, but
surfaces," he says. "In the past, if they were
looking for something specific, they tested
the product and that's how they would measure it. Now they're testing the product itself
as well as the contact surfaces. They're trying to minimize their risk. They're thinking
'Well, maybe we did good with the product,
but if there's still something on the surface,
it could eventually show up in the product at
the end of the day anyway.'"
That might be doubly important when it
comes to gluten, which continues to be a
hot-button topic among consumers, retailers and producers.
"If you have a product and you're going to claim it was made in a glutenfree facility, or something like that, you
have to live by that seal that's on the
box of your product," Mora says. "Our
customers have definitely increased the
amount of testing they're doing because
of the awareness. I would say in the last couple of years it's changed drastically. It's been
brought to the forefront a lot more because
so many people nowadays are claiming to
have gluten-free diets. It's changed a lot in
the sense that it's more of a common test for
a lot of different customers. The marketing
of the products themselves has a lot to do
with it."
Not to mention, allergen detection is now a
common topic of discussion when it comes
to audits.
"We always get the phone call from the customer that says they need to verify my sani-

tation procedures and almost always in that
same conversation, allergens and allergen
checks are brought up," Mora says. "The auditors out there are also looking for it. Now
they're asking, 'Do you clean and what are
you doing about checking for allergens?' It
used to be more like 'you probably should.'
Now it's more like 'Tell me what you used
today.'"

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of instore - March 2018