Food and drink safety news round-up

Campden BRI makes senior hire​

Food and drink research company Campden BRI has appointed a new technology director for its Centre of Technological Excellence (CoTE).

Leading a team of 70 staff at the CoTE, Chris Huscroft, who has 40 years’ experience in research and development roles across the bakery and food ingredients sectors, will drive the Centre’s development of technology research and services.

Allergy app for restaurant goers​

A new app to help improve food safety in restaurants has been launched by Allergy Menu.

The app enables chefs to keep a live updated menu with allergy information held within it. Customers then use the app to view the menu filtered to only show those dishes that are safe for them to eat.

A spokesman for consultancy the Food Safety Company said: “This really helps improve how restaurants provide their allergen information, in a way that’s easy to manage and update. I hope all restaurants will use it.”

‘Trawler net’ fraud detection​

A system for detecting adulteration in food and preventing fraud has been developed by UK authentication and testing provider Food Forensics.

Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) allows testers to identify and validate multiple species in products such as seafood, dried mushrooms and ready meals. Unlike a targeted system of identification that looks for a specific species, NGS uses a “trawler net” approach to capture as much gene data as possible.

These genes are sequenced and compared against a reference database, using each of the unique sequences to identify the species present in the food.

Signature Flatbreads shares technical know-how​

Signature Flatbreads has visited bakeries across the world in a bid to share its technical knowledge.

Members of the technical team have travelled to plants in Accra, Ghana and Mumbai, India, advising on how to make factories more productive. The advice included best practice for maintaining machinery and achieving optimum safety standards.

Jordans completes magnetic separator audit​

Jordans Dorset Ryvita has completed an audit of the magnetic separators installed at its plant in Poole, Dorset.

Conducted over three days by engineers from Bunting Magnetics Europe, the inspection formed part of Jordans’ continued quality audit process.

The tests were conducted in two stages: inspection of the physical integrity of the magnetic separator, including checking welds, and assessing any wear and damage to the surface; and a test of the strength of the magnetic separator.

This was achieved by placing a magnetic ball or plate into the magnetic field and then measuring the force (in kgs) needed to remove that object from the surface of the magnetic