PET Food Processing - September 2019 - 10

TRENDS

While end-of-line
product inspection
is a necessary step,
inspections should
occur many times
throughout the process with the help of
metal detectors and
x-ray technology to
reduce waste and
improve efficiency.
Mettler Toledo

10

have been previously required in many facilities." Some areas Wood has seen evolve most recently are the physical
separation of raw ingredients and finished product areas, controlling traffic, and more efficient and automated
equipment that include integrated controls, monitoring
and reporting.
Sharon Dobesh, director, technical services, The
Industrial Fumigant Company (IFC), a pest management firm based in Kansas City, Missouri, says processors are requesting more timely and accurate pest identifications and wanting to know more about the biology
and habits of pests. "This will help the facility find the
root cause of a pest problem and find ways to control or
mitigate the pest in a timely manner," she says. "Another
area which has changed is the need to have better documentation and records for auditors. This includes pest
sighting logs, approved pesticide lists and pest management records (including maps) of activity in all devices,
such as insect light traps (ILTs), rodent stations, insect
bait stations and sticky traps."
Jerry Heath, board-certified Entomologist for IFC,
says some of greatest innovations in pest management
in the last 15 to 20 years relate to compliance regulations, with three technologies evolving the most. "Better
pheromone products have been developed for monitoring (plus control in some cases), and software programs
that utilize pheromone monitoring trap data. Plus,
other monitoring tools have facilitated trend reporting
and predictability. This feeds into the current need for

PET FOOD PROCESSING | September 2019 | www.petfoodprocessing.net

prevention rather than reaction," he says. Additionally,
the adoption of Insect Growth Regulator (IGR) technology has been instrumental in phasing out the use of
methyl bromide fumigants in food processing, as well as
reducing the need for fumigations and down time.
Because many of the pet food facilities were not originally built to make pet food but may have been feed or
flour mills or grain processing facilities, Treblik notes,
adapting them to meet today's expectations has probably
been one of the biggest areas of evolution. "For example,
Cargill has long had a 'kill step' before packaging our
product so it is sanitized for safe consumption - even by
humans," he says. "We then package the food in a clean
air environment to eliminate any Salmonella risk. Under
the new regulations, every pet food manufacturer in every facility must follow this practice."

Overlooked areas

Historically, manufacturers have viewed product inspection as an end-of-line (EoL) process, but Rogers warns
limiting inspection to the EoL can increase waste and
decrease efficiency. "Finding deficiencies at this point
wastes all of the value that has been added to the product," he says. "It is more cost-effective to conduct inspections throughout the production process, ensuring that
only conforming products continue through the process, and non-conforming ones are discarded before further value is added. Once the final product is packaged
and all the value has been added to the product, the EoL
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