Food Safety & Quality teams across food industry segments are often tasked with ensuring raw ingredient integrity without impacting production timelines. This balancing act has become even more challenging considering increased product demand, pandemic-related disruptions, and growing complexity of the global supply chain.
On February 4, 2021, a Congressional report examining toxic elements in baby foods and a renewed focus on the achievability of new action levels by the FDA, have recently put a spotlight squarely on heavy metal contamination in baby food.
This report included results of 168 baby foods in the US and cited some significant concerns in heavy metal contamination across all suppliers.
Some key findings include:
95% contained Lead, 73% Arsenic, 75% Cadmium, & 32% contained Mercury
25% contained all 4 heavy metals
20% of all baby foods contained more than 10X the 1ppb generally recognized leads threshold.
Rice based cereal posed the most significant risk including high levels of inorganic arsenic, as well as the other 4 metals
The Challenges:
- HARPC & Preventative Controls
With the implementation of FSMA in 2011, and application of the Hazard Analysis and Risk-based Preventative Controls (HARPC) in 2015, there was a focus on…
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Posted in Under the Microscope.