It was just an idea. The resulting product was placed on the market extremely successfully. Many retail chains listed it. The one product quickly developed into a series that was exported to other European countries. However, a newly introduced allergen then forced major operational changes. Experienced expert Jürgen Schlösser explains the problems involved.

By Jürgen Schlösser

Prior to this, demand for this product series exploded. The discussion with the production heads for more production time for this series became increasingly difficult, but the ingenious colleagues in production largely managed to meet the demand.

A new superstar was born. Many consumers loved the taste of the new product, and even the smallest supermarkets were eager to have a small selection of this product series.
The production team tried to alter the processes and system technology as quickly as possible to facilitate an increase of this product series within the overall production. After only
one year, this product series accounted for 10% of overall production volume.

This true story isn’t old. In fact, it happened very recently. Over and over again, there are these shooting stars that many people invest their hopes in without having really anticipated them.

The success was enormous and now everyone involved could give each other a pat on the back, if only this product had not unfortunately contained so much peanut. Before all this, peanut products had intentionally not been processed at this operation. Then this new product series had introduced a new allergen into the production facility that now led to major problems. The quality assurance team noticed too late that the processes that were changed too quickly had produced cross-contaminations, and now peanut traces were also being found in several more products. The peanut trace content rose ever higher in the first year. Questions emerged, especially as a result of the international business: How high is the peanut content permitted to be, even if it has already been declared as traces on the packaging? And where are the peanut traces coming from?

A stage control (Fig. 1) conducted in the production of a chocolate cream clearly depicted the weak points. The rework that was used already contained peanut traces of between 100 and 1,000 mg/kg. The mixer initially used in the production line in which the powder and rework were mixed together already showed a significant increase of the contamination, since the mixer was only swept out and could not be cleaned wet.

The same cleaning problem also appeared in the subsequent aggregates. Since they were used to process many creams with chocolate, wet cleaning had to be avoided. The only possible cleaning method consists of scraping the last production batch, resulting in a doubling of the peanut contamination in the mixed ingredients.

The final step involved mixing all of the prepared ingredients in a large mixer with liquid fats and oils. Pumping out the resulting chocolate cream left a very thick layer on the interior wall and mixing appliances, which was very difficult to scrape away because of course wet cleaning could not be used here either. The subsequent increase quadrupled the concentration in the finished cream. The cream is pumped through a ring circuit where remnants of the cream remained that had previously been pumped through the same circuit into the buffer tank. This explains why the peanut contamination in the chocolate cream is somewhat lower than in the large mixer. However, if a prior peanut source had flowed through this ring circuit, we would now have a significantly high increase of the peanut concentration in the chocolate cream.

Fortunately, the cream is only a small component of the ready-to-eat finished product. This very significantly reduces the high concentration of peanut traces from over 4,000 mg/kg down to a value of approximately 100 mg/kg. Since peanut is declared as a traces source on the packaging of the chocolate product, a concentration of around 100 mg/kg is acceptable.

In this test series, the concentration of the peanut contamination in the rework of 100mg/kg was relatively small, and the machinery, aggregates and pipes were thoroughly cleaned prior to the test. But as has been described, peanut contamination in the rework was verified at over 1g/kg. In the event that the cleaning (scraping) was also not sufficiently thorough, the peanut contamination in the ready-to-eat finished product could also exceed 1,000mg/kg.

In my view, here is where a limit of the maximum traces of allergen in the finished product should be set. Sensitive allergy sufferers react very strongly to traces significantly above the 1,000mg/kg mark.

This test demonstrated that products are manufactured on this production line for which it cannot be guaranteed that allergen traces are definitively below the 1,000mg/kg mark. The places where cross-contamination causes allergens to be transferred to the subsequent product were able to be clearly identified. Now the processes or production facilities have to be changed so that contamination is no longer possible or is substantially reduced. This applies in particular for the cleaning measures. Notably improved cleaning of the relevant machinery very clearly reduces the transfer of allergens.

If altering the processes and/or system technology is not possible, then changes must be made to production planning with the result that peanut products are always produced at the end of the week. Then all of the parts of the production line can be cleaned very thoroughly over the weekend, and on Monday morning a production line is available that will not cause any transfer of allergens into the product.

In the wake of the peanut products’ success, the marketing team is now brainstorming about the next test. The list of ideas once again includes products which would introduce a new allergen into this factory. However, this time a team of production and quality assurance workers will consider in advance how to handle the next shooting star.