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Cost-Effective Management Tools for Ensuring Food Quality and Safety – Free Online Information

admin — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:38:49 +0000

This document entitled “Cost-effective management tools for ensuring food quality and safety”is actually the instruction manual for training designed for small and medium agroindustrial enterprises.

click image to visit site

The specific objectives of the course which is expected to take at least 40 hours are

Identify the characteristics and usefulness of some basic tools for collecting,
processing and analysing market information.

Present the sequence of steps to be followed for market research and
preparing plans.

Emphasize the importance of a proactive approach to quality and safety
within the agro-industrial enterprise.

Review the tools and systems available for improved food quality and safety
assurance throughout the agrifood chain.

Illustrate the principles of product traceability and its importance as a
support tool in quality and safety improvement programmes.

Underline the importance of quality management for implementing initiatives
to improve product quality and safety.

Outline the use of planning principles as a tool for improving quality and
safety

Although written as the structure on which trainers can write their course, there is a wealth of good information in here. The information on marketing, market reseal and planning is very detailed but simply and clearly explained.

Sections on improving quality and safety, implementing quality management in small enterprises and management of the process are equally useful.

Design Your Own Drinks – Single Screenshot Series

admin — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 08:19:33 +0000

I previously posted on getting your chewing gum in your own customised package, but here you can create a carbonated soft drink for your own use and for sale through the manufacturing company.

A COP-17 Inspired Look at Carbon Footprints in Food Chains

admin — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 14:09:39 +0000

With the United Nations and many of the world leaders in climate change on their way to Durban for COP-17, I think it might be worthwhile focussing on some Food Chain and Food Processing Issues that effect the carbon footprint of the food we eat.
There is no lack of information and discussion in the area, so I will not be trying to give you a full picture, but rather I will present some of the things that interest me and maybe identify places you can go to get information.

To start if off I suggest you have a look at this paper, that was publicised 5 years ago when the whole let’s not import food from afar was first voiced and seemed to make sense.

click the image to visit the website

The first think that strikes the reader is the complexity of the analysis necessary to evaluate the carbon impact of a food product sitting on the plate of the consumer. Not only are there a whole range of possibilities but all activities in the Value Chain need to be considered in detail. One of the most complex issues that makes the comparison of data very difficult is where is the boundary drawn within which the carbon foot print is calculated – must the evaluation go back to the mining of the iron ore which was used to make the steel that forms a filler valve?

What this and a study of the document clearly shows is that it is most likely to make simple comparisons without fully understanding all value chains. even then one may worry that it’s too easy to “pull the wool” over the readers eyes in defining how the carbon footprint is evaluated in any particular case.

This obviously makes the simple “mines better than yours argument” impossible to make without detail investigation and infant many counter intuitive results have allready been identified by detailed like cycle analyses.

The conclusion and recommendation of this report, on only a small sector of the food industry, are rather disappointing as they are rather imprecise identifying many valid issues and needing to call for “much more study”.

An interesting comment in the paper, was that the carbon footprint is probably closely related to the perishibillity of the product. This since cold chain operation, transport and cold storage as well as their effect on waste are all big factors in the emission of green house gasses.

Finally, for technologists and scientists it’s important to note that reductions is ghg emissions are probably just as likely to come from behavior change as from new technology.

Tastes in Sweets, Reinforcing Understanding of French Consumers – Five Months in Bourgogne VII

admin — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 20:27:09 +0000

The other day I was at a birthday party where two examples of Mexican sweets were distributed to a mainly French Group of people.

The first was a thin tube approximately 4mm in diameter and about 8cm long, filled with a rather bland tasting heavy jelly. It was very hard to eat and didn’t attract or repel anyone and was simply dismissed.

The second was a completely different story!

photograph by ChigyTweeter

published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

Sandigomas is a very different sweet shaped like a watermelon slice, it has a very strong jelly texture. Burt its the taste that had the French hating it! They used all sorts of adjectives like bizarre, horrible and worse and were quick to make their comments.

The first flavor is chili, which is quite strong and persists for several minutes. Thereafter the jelly has a strong acidic flavor but without any strong watermelon or other fruit flavor. That’s after your tastebuds get over the chili.

This little episode is quite a nice reflection of, I would say, the majority of the French who see themselves as authorities on food (this was no doubt this wasn’t a sweet), always sticking to their rules (the use of chili in a sweet breaking the sweet and salty rule) and not very willing to try things with an open mind (no one tasted it as something different as I did, which allowed me to see a different and interesting taste).

Maybe a bit sweeping from this one example but really reinforcing my conclusions of the last few months. Of course this kind of understanding of the market is critical in reaching the consumer.

Food Content Misrepresentation – Single Screenshot Series

admin — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 15:14:14 +0000

from: On Food
(click image for full story online)