Food-borne pathogens can be introduced into bakery products through a wide range of ingredients, pests, unhygienic handling, and environmental factors. Instead of responding to safety failures after baking is done, the Kill-Step Validation (KSV) requirements of the FDA Food Safety Modernization ACT of 2011 are intended to prevent them and provide documented evidence.
Reading Thermal, headquartered in Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania, has been studying, measuring, and understanding the commercial baking process for more than 25 years. We manufacture and support the SCORPION® 2 Profiling System that has become a standard in the baking industry.
Kill Step Validation
Controlling internal food temperature is key to achieving food safety. The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) requires commercial bakeries to provide validation of process controls, such as thermal kill steps, in an effort to reduce food borne pathogens, such as Salmonella spp, in ingredients and finished products.
The SCORPION® 2 Temperature Sensor Array is designed to measure temperature at product level, in fixed positions across the conveyor, and delivers a true representation of what your product is experiencing over time. Different types of pluggable sensors are available, including one designed for solid or tight mesh conveyors and one for open mesh conveyors.
The sensor array is connected to the SCORPION® 2 Data Logger and then travels through the oven with the product, yielding a precise picture of temperature from side-to-side and end-to-end.
After gathering the data, the SCORPION® Software (SV8) Food Safety Module makes it easy to calculate lethality and then generates a comprehensive report displaying cumulative log reduction. By combining this ease of measurement with robust data capture, the SCORPION® 2 System makes it simple to optimize your process while meeting food safety standards.
Customers who want to measure temperature only can take advantage of the SCORPION® 2 LITE Temperature Data Logger. Designed as a low-cost alternative to the full-featured SCORPION® 2 Data Logger, it simplifies the measurement of environment and internal product core temperatures.
Temperature, Air Velocity, Heat Flux & Humidity All Work Together
It’s important to understand that the four key oven baking parameters – temperature, air velocity, heat flux and humidity – are interrelated. They work together to control final product quality, e.g., humidity is affected by air velocity and temperature.
Bakeries all over the world rely on the SCORPION® 2 Humidity Sensor, for example, which measures the absolute moisture content of the thermal environment in both heating and cooling processes. And oven air velocity can be measured and recorded by adding the SCORPION® 2 Air Velocity Sensor.
If you want to easily comply with FSMA Kill-Step Validation (KSV) for baking, you can count on the state-of-the-art Reading Thermal SCORPION® 2 Data Logger and our various sensors and sensor arrays. Call our headquarters in Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania at (610) 678-5890 Ext. 2, or contact us online to learn more about our innovative products.