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FT-Apr17-eMag

INDUSTRIAL INSTRUMENTATION LTD TEMPERATURE ISSUES SEE SURIMI COMPANY IN HOT WATER ONSITE INSTRUMENT CALIBRATIONS HAND-HELD TEMPERATURE CALIBRATIONS 0064 9 271 6560 - tony@instrument.co.nz - www.instrument.co.nz 30 APRIL 2017 UNIT 7, 123 CRYERS ROAD EAST TAMAKI, AUCKLAND FT277 CONSEQUENCE AND CONFIDENCE It’s that time of the year…when quality people are on your case to get the calibration schedule completed, finding old reports, choosing which instruments have to be done…and it goes on. So, why do we put ourselves through this? Why do your instruments need to be ‘calibrated’? The key word here is consequence, because in order to answer the first question, you have to reply with a second. What is the consequence of the measuring instrument being incorrect? If there is no consequence to the inaccuracy, then there is no need to have the instrument calibrated. The second key word here is confidence, because once you have identified the instruments to be calibrated, you must use somebody in whom you have confidence to carry out the calibrations. ISO 17025 accreditation is all about confidence - in people, procedures and equipment. It’s what we get audited on. A Malaysian seafood processing plant is being investigated by the US Food and Drug Administration after shortcomings in its critical temperature controls left its surimi products vulnerable. TS Food Industry, which produces air-packed surimi, is in violation of the seafood Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) regulations after a recent FDA inspection team found problems last year that the company has “not adequately addressed.” American news agencies say the firm’s HACCP for cooked surimi does not list the critical control points for controlling the food safety hazard of pathogen growth and toxin formation, particularly with ambient refrigerated temperatures for thawed frozen pasteurised thread fin bream surimi or limiting unrefrigerated processing times to three hours or less. The company has also been instructed to monitor internal temperature every two hours, and make sure chiller temperatures are visually checked fairly during storage. The FDA also instructed the company, under the corrective action plan for cooling, to move product to another chiller and notify maintenance. The FDA asked for a response from the Malaysian company within 15 days, and says it can place the surimi under Import Alert, making it subject to detention without physical examination. In a letter to the company released by the FDA, TS Food Industry is asked to correct the violations. “More specifically, your response should include documentation and information that would assist us in evaluating your corrections, such as documentation reflecting the changes you made, such as a copy of your revised HACCP plan, five consecutive days of completed monitoring records (ie complete sets of monitoring records for the production of five production date codes of products) to demonstrate implementation of the plan, and any additional information that you wish to supply that provides assurance of your intent to fully comply now and in the future with the seafood HACCP regulation,” the Administration says. L O G I S T I C S


FT-Apr17-eMag
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