Food Safety Archives

Guest Post By Dr. Darin Detwiler, Professor, Author and Renowned Food Safety Icon and Advocate

The 2024 Food Safety Summit in Chicago brought together a rich tapestry of people, concerns, achievements, ideas, and solutions. To me, this event is like a perfect blend of timeless protagonists and antagonists in a story about the Herculean efforts behind food safety.

The range of products and solutions showcased at the Summit reflects the diverse challenges faced by the food industry, each product or service addressing a unique food safety issue. This provided attendees with the opportunity to learn from experts and engage in hands-on experiences.

As an academic, I see this as a significant bonus, especially for those whose training may not be as scientific or technology based as others. I wish more students had exposure to these diverse solutions beyond descriptions and photos online or in books. Seeing the exhibitors and their passion behind their solutions is not only eye-opening but also inspirational. Learning about solutions, such as high-quality food handling gloves, food production line x-rays, or thermal intelligence, highlights the various stages along food’s journey where critical control points can benefit.

Digital solutions, such as Logile’s Thermal Intelligence^TM, allow for real-time (and even remote) monitoring of food products. This innovative technology offers real-time, accurate data ideal for maintaining optimal food storage and handling conditions, thus reducing the risk of foodborne illnesses. The increasing levels of efficiency and transparency inspire and support the optimism and courage we seek in food safety leaders.

The Summit’s exhibitor hall reminded me of the bustling malls and vibrant food courts of the 1980s. Each booth, with its unique offerings, was like a storefront, representing the diverse needs and solutions within the global food landscape. This event is a microcosm of the broader food industry, showcasing a wide spectrum of solutions from the “sorcerers” and “scientists” who identify critical issues and dedicate resources and years to develop effective solutions.

The Summit wasn’t just about technology and products or services; it was a gathering of both freshmen food safety leaders (in the first years of their career, some right out of college) and senior, seasoned experts (the voices, the teachers, the trailblazers). We hugged, made introductions, and took selfies. This, to me, was the food safety culture that is often defined on stage or in writing, but that people sometimes struggle to visualize. Those moments of connection and camaraderie are what I see as the true essence of food safety culture.

The 2024 Food Safety Summit in Chicago was a celebration of the food safety community. From exploring new technologies like thermal intelligence to engaging with both new and seasoned professionals, the Summit reinforced the importance of collaboration and continuous learning in advancing food safety.

About the author
Dr. Darin Detwiler is an award-winning food safety academic, advisor, advocate, and author. For nearly 30 years, he has played a unique role in controlling foodborne illness. After losing his son, Riley, to E.coli in 1993 Jack in the Box outbreak, the Secretary of Agriculture invited Detwiler’s collaboration on consumer education. Detwiler is a professor of food policy and corporate social responsibility at Northeastern University and has served in appointed or other advisory capacities for the USDA, the FDA, NEHA, and more. His research and insights have appeared across industry and media publications, TV, podcasts, his own books “Food Safety: Past, Present, and Predictions” and “Building the Future of Food Safety Technology,” and in the 2023 Netflix documentary “Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food.”

Denise Cole, Product Management
Nathaniel Sheetz, Product Management
Neeta Dash, Product Management

Reduce risk. Protect your customers. Protect your banner. Measure where it matters. We continue our series examining the 4 Quadrants of an effective food safety program (see part 1 and part 2) with a deeper look into Quadrant 2. In our previous post, we described some ways to achieve these goals in food handling and holding environments, and briefly summarized how digital temperature monitoring solutions can be effective. Such solutions combine wireless temperature sensors with powerful software to capture and manage food safety temperatures, and in this post, we will review some of their benefits.

Maintain safe temperatures

The first and perhaps most obvious benefit of digital temperature monitoring systems involves one of the fundamental elements of food safety: ensuring that products are maintained at safe temperatures. Wireless temperature sensors enable an organization to have a complete real-time view of temperatures at the level of the food within an asset, including mobile assets and hot holding units, and even during power outages. When temperatures go outside the configured temperature range for the specified length of time, alerts are automatically generated to notify those best equipped to resolve the problem, and leadership always has the visibility necessary to make informed decisions.

Of course, these automatic real-time temperature readings replace many of the manual temperature checks that previously occupied employees, allowing them to refocus on activities that generate revenue, such as making food, selling food, and providing customer service. Meeting basic food holding safety standards using manual temperature checks, either on paper or digitally, can require at least several hours per day of employee labor, depending on the size of the store and its fresh food offerings. A solution that supports wireless temperature sensors capable of capturing temperatures in both cold and hot holding environments can entirely replace these checks, with the added benefit of reducing costs of associated supplies (like probe thermometers and alcohol wipes).

Avoid food loss and the associated impacts

But these savings are not the only quantifiable benefit. Digital monitoring solutions also help avoid food loss events, reducing shrink and the corresponding labor used to pull, discard, and restock product. After all, food safety is not compromised by temperature alone. Time is a factor as well. When food is found at unsafe temperatures and the history of the product is unclear, the health of the customer cannot be put at risk – and thus waste must be incurred. Conversely, if food is found at unsafe temperatures but the timeline of the cause is clear and within safe parameters, then those products can be saved. By providing early detection of risky conditions, product can be kept safe and shrink prevented.

Save energy and preserve product quality

Digital monitoring systems also create advantages not directly tied to food safety. Two closely linked benefits are energy savings and product quality preservation. Because properly installed sensors relay product-level temperatures, this information can be used to adjust assets to optimal settings that simultaneously keep food safe and avoid wasting energy by overchilling or overheating product, both of which compromise the flavor and texture of food. Energy savings can be particularly substantial when sensors reveal an empty hot holding asset left on overnight – a surprisingly common occurrence that also poses a safety risk.

Gain visibility into asset performance

A related benefit is visibility of asset performance. Clear and easily accessible temperature records help indicate whether a temperature deviation is due to asset malfunction, as opposed to exterior forces (stocking levels, air flow, etc.) that can be easily corrected without a costly service call. Graphic portrayals of equipment performance also help management assess the strengths and weaknesses of specific assets and guide future purchases.

Conclusion

These are a few of the most significant benefits gained by implementing a digital temperature monitoring system. Simply put, the best monitoring enables the best management and the most efficient operations, all of which strengthen the bottom line. Now, having explored these advantages over the course of two posts, the next post in this series will wrap up the first two food safety quadrants and show how a fully integrated digital solution supports cooking, cooling, handling, receiving and more, and uses process guidance and corrective actions to drive food safety success.

Logile will be at the International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) 2023 Annual Meeting July 16-19 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada – find us at Booth 556 with our partner BluLine Solutions LLC if you are attending!