This month in our ongoing “Foreign Material Hall of Fame” series, we look at some of the most notable cases we’ve seen in one of the nation’s most valuable commodities: beef.
Foreign material contamination can take a costly toll on your net profits if not appropriately handled. At FlexXray, we are experts at identifying beef product contaminants and #1 in foreign material contamination inspection. We handle projects of all sizes and all types of beef. Our custom processes can help identify contaminants like bone, plastic, rubber and metal that your inline technology may miss so you can get your product off foreign material product hold.
Boneless Steaks = Actually Boneless
Location: Kansas, USA
Sometimes it isn’t the size of the contaminant that can be detrimental to your profits but the sheer amount of bone found in your boneless filets that can alarm consumers. In one batch of steak product, we found six fragments of bone that ranged from 2mm to more than 26mm. If found by an end-user, this level of bone contamination could do serious harm to both the consumer and your brand.
FlexXray’s Contaminant Retrieval process provided a detailed Contimnant Retrieval report that helped the customer trace their issue inside their production facility and incorporate a mitigation strategy to help resolve bone contamination issues. Our ability to detect bone contamination with exacting detail helped us verify uncontaminated product that could be sent to market.
Size Matters
Location: Texas, USA
Sticks and stones may break bones, but metal can put your consumers in the hospital. A ground beef producer in our home state of Texas found that a machine they used to process cattle had a piece of metal missing. They sent their ground round to FlexXray, and lo and behold; we found a thin metal hook 85mm long.
This case is a textbook example of the limitations of inline metal detection technology. Because the hook was extremely thin, it wasn’t caught by on-site technology consistently enough to determine its location. This seemingly small find saved our customer thousands of dollars of product. Our sensitivity and ability to detect foreign material contamination are unmatched.
FlexXray Stops Foreign Material Contamination From Steaking Claims On Your Product
Location: Colorado, USA
How did a 75mm zip tie end up in raw chili meat? You’d have to ask our customer. Fortunately, they used our Contaminant Retrieval Process service after using our custom processes and technology to identify where the zip tie was in their product. As a result, they received a detailed Contaminant Retrieval Report that included information to help them trace their issue at their plant.
Not only have we pioneered the field of foreign material contamination detection, we’ve perfected it by continuing to improve our processes, technology, and the information we can provide to our customers to help detect foreign material contamination wherever we can.
Beefing Up Your Product Quality
Location: Southeast USA
Sometimes we only find one type of contaminant in the product we’re sent to inspect. Other times, we find a whole variety. In this case, we found bone, metal and plastic, all of which could have triggered a product recall that could have been detrimental to the customer’s brand.
By identifying these contaminants, we helped our customer recognize a problem they couldn’t pin down on their own. Our ability to handle a large quantity of product through our inspection network meant that we saved safe product—and our customer’s reputation in the market.
Beef is one of the most valuable food commodities in North America. When you have an issue with your product, time isn’t on your side. We prioritize keeping your product safe by keeping temperatures controlled, inspections documented and leveraging our inspection network’s capacity to turn your product around quickly and safely. If you need expert help with your beef foreign material contamination problem, you need FlexXray.
