Simple Materials Traceability for Food Processors

MILLBURY, MA (Sharewellnewswire.com)  August  16, 2012 - One of the big fears for many small and mid-sized food processors is that they get a shipment of contaminated ingredients or that some employee makes a critical mistake that results in defective or contaminated food products being shipped to customers.

If the company does not have good records as to what ingredients went into which products, and to which customer the products were shipped, the company can be forced by the FDA or the USDA to recall every product they have made that is still in the supply chain. The cost of this recall and the damage to their reputation can easily put a small or mid-sized food processor out of business.

BellHawk Systems now offers a simple-to-use software solution at a cost starting at under $300/month. This software can be installed at each company’s own processing plant or used as an on-line service over the Internet. This solution makes use of barcode scanning technology to enable easy capture of the traceability data. It stores the materials traceability data in an electronic database for rapid recall when needed.

The system produces three primary reports, as Excel spreadsheets:

1. Trace forward from a Julian date lot number and product code, to all the customers who received the product.
2. Trace back to all ingredients by supplier and lot number that went into a specific batch of product.
3. Trace forward from a defective or contaminated ingredient to all batches in which this ingredient was used. 

By making use of barcode tracking technology and mobile devices, production workers and material handlers are able to easily capture materials traceability data in real-time. This data then enables food processors to rapidly carry out recall practice drills as well as to quickly respond to real emergencies.

Most importantly, the BellHawk solution enables food processors to minimize the cost and damage to their reputation when a recall is required by limiting the scope to just those products that are defective, rather than doing a massive recall.

Recently, it cost one small food processor over a million dollars to recall products, when they used some contaminated peppers as an ingredient. When compared to this, $300 a month is a small price to pay for minimizing the scope of the recall.

For more information, please see www.BellHawk.com or call 1-508-865-8070 and press “1” for expert assistance.

Contact Info:
1-508-865-8070
www.BellHawk.com

Source: http://www.sharewellnewswire.com/simple-materials-traceability-for-food-processors-2424.htm/#ixzz23neTP9BI