Modern food mass production can be incredibly complicated, and produce some amazingly high quality, and delicious products. But the downside of using all that great automated machinery is a lot of moving, metal, parts. How can you mitigate the risk of those parts falling or shearing off and ending up in the food?

The Problem with Mass Food Production

…Is that it can require a lot of different machinery, and processes, and at every stage along the way of this complicated journey, food is potentially exposed to more and more contaminants, which could prove dangerous to the consumer.

The more processed the food is, the more machines it passes through, and the complexity of the machines can be an issue in itself. The more moving parts, the greater the risk, or even inevitability of a part, like a screw, knob or nut, falling off into the food.

If that happens, you’ve then got multiple concerns. First and foremost, before we even reach the consumer, what’s a loose chunk of metal going through your food production rig going to do? It’s not going to smoothly pass through. Chances are it’s going to damage other machines, potentially causing other bits of metal to shear off into the food.

Then you’ve got the fact that having big chunks of metal in your food is incredibly dangerous for the consumer. Choking, internal damage, and even death as well as other problems, can be caused by a stray chunk of metal, and as a food producer, it’s your duty to prevent that.

Then you’ve got the financial implications of the whole issue. First off, you’re repairing the damaged machinery, which when it comes to industrial scale machines, is never going to be cheap.

Then you’ve got potential lawsuits and brand damage from consumers who encounter the metal in their food. Taking big chunks of money, as well as brand trust and viability is going to be hugely damaging to your business, and could even prove catastrophic if someone were die as a result of the metal contamination.

Then you’ve got the food health and safety legislative fines and issues. Most countries will fine or even shut down factories or facilities that are producing contaminated food, and if you’re failing to meet basic standards, you could very easily run afoul of the law.

All that adds up to a very expensive, dangerous and litigious problem for your business.

What’s the Solution?

While this isn’t a solution to all food processing issues, installing commercial food metal detectors at intervals in your processing system will mitigate the damages stray bits of metal can cause.

Commercial metal detectors can pick up all ferrous metals, which is the majority in any food processing scenario, due to the prevalence of stainless steel. Having multiple installed guarantees you can catch the offending foreign material in the food as quickly as possible, before it damages any more machinery.

All in all, commercial metal detectors can more than pay for themselves in a large food processing operation. It takes a load off your mind, and you, as the producer, know that your customers are getting a safe product, with little to no risk of finding any metal in their mouthful of food.