Responding to the HVP recall: GFTC’s recommendations

March 10, 2010

Canada’s recall of processed food containing hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP) that may be contaminated with salmonella bacteria has continued to escalate this week.

Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has issued a warning list of products. Click here for more information from the CFIA.

In the wake of the HVP recall, GFTC can assist companies with your response in two different ways:

• assessing risk and determining what to do next; and

• validating and verifying cooking instructions.

If you sell a ready-to-cook product with recalled HVP, conduct an assessment of their products in terms of how it’s used by the consumer as well as the risk level of that consumer. For instance, are the consumers very young or elderly? Subsequently the risk should be managed accordingly.

Next, it’s important to verify and validate the cooking instructions you provide to the user (whether consumer or manufacturer) -- regardless of whether or not the product contains affected NHP.

Finally, if you sell ready-to-eat products with the recalled HVP, be prepared for a recall situation. It's important to note that heat resistance of Salmonella increases with decreasing water activity of the products. For instance, heat resistance of Salmonella in chocolate milk powder is much higher than in chocolate milk and fluid milk. Therefore, it’s important to conduct a validation study to show a desired log reduction for the bioburden in the ingredients.

If you use HVP or a similar ingredient, here is a proactive approach to reassess your HACCP system:

• accurately identify the intended use of the product in the product description form as RTE or RTC;

• review the trend report of the ingredient from an approved supplier, then generate a risk matrix to categorize the ingredient and supplier with risk level per past performance and ingredient risk category;

• identify the validated cooking instruction for the consumer that delivers the required log reduction of pertinent organisms in the ready-to-cook finished product;

• identify the validated lethality process step to deliver the required log reduction of pertinent organisms in the ready-to-eat finished products; and

• identify post-lethality treatment contamination via employee, environment, and equipment via a plant walk through assessment.

For more information, contact Paul Medeiros pmedeiros@gftc.ca.

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