Food Grade Metal Detectors Ensure Your Customers’ Safety
Nearly a million pounds of breaded chicken were recalled in the US recently because of reports that minute pieces of metal—from the conveyor belts in the processing facility—had possibly ended up in the product.
If your business involves the processing of consumer goods, textile, paper, pharmaceuticals, or food, one of the aspects you must consider is that of ensuring that there are no metal contaminants in the products you offer to your customers. To make this facet of your business simpler, rest assured that there are metal detectors now available in a wide variety of frequencies and sensitivities. Read on to find out more about your options.
Food Grade Metal Detectors
Food grade metal detectors are used by various sectors, such as the consumer goods, textile, paper, and pharmaceutical industries. The food production industry in particular places value and trust in certain high quality industrial metal detectors, which, depending on the model, can be used for a range of different products, whether they are fresh or frozen, wet or dry.
This is especially important for food industry manufacturers, given that countries around the world are enacting more stringent food safety regulations aimed at increasing traceability and transparency, as well as preventing contamination and illnesses. Manufacturers must strive to educate their workers and to design their plants in ways that reduce the number of potential contamination sources. Food grade metal detectors must be integrated into an overall contamination-elimination plan, rather than acting as the single solution to contamination problems.
Stainless Steel Detectors
Stainless steel detectors make use of multiple frequencies over a broad spectrum, which allow them to pick up on stainless steel contaminants with up to 100% accuracy, even when dealing with contaminants found in wet environments. This technology is of great importance to the food manufacturing industry, given that classic “balanced coil” food grade metal detectors are not especially well equipped to deal with stainless steel, despite this metal being especially prevalent in the food manufacturing process.
High-Sensitivity Metal Detectors
High-sensitivity metal detectors can detect even the smallest metal contaminants, and some come with detailed data-collection capabilities that can be easily transferred via USB. Others are available with multi-level password protection so that only qualified, trained personnel will be able to do things such as change sensitivity settings, which have the potential to cause unexpected problems should they be mismanaged by accident or by somebody lacking the appropriate credentials. These detectors can be used to detect ferrous, non-ferrous. and even stainless steel metal contaminants.
In-Foil Metal Detectors
Many food products are packaged in aluminum foil, such as ready-made meals and baked goods. In-foil metal detectors provide users with the ability to detect ferrous metal contaminants inside food products wrapped foil.
Large Bag Metal Detectors
Large bag metal detectors are available in a number of different configurations to suit various product needs. For instance, there are large bag metal detectors that can detect metal contaminants as small as 2.0mm in a bag of dry product weighing up to 100lbs. Some are also customizable in the event that existing configurations are not quite suited to a particular product.
Outlook
As tech-savvy, health-conscious consumers continue to exert pressure on their governments to update old food safety regulations, scientists and designers continue to work to provide high-quality, user-friendly industrial metal detectors to manufacturers across the world.