LIMS: An Important Tool for Protecting Food and Beverage Brand Value
At first glance, a recall might seem like a food or beverage company’s biggest fear, but from an economic point of view, the cost of recalling a product in an orderly and controlled process pales in comparison to the cost of brand damage to a manufacturer’s product—and potentially losing the trust of consumers—regardless of the cause. Whether it’s a can of soda, a bag of corn chips or a jar of peanut butter, any food product not only needs to be safe for consumption but also taste exactly the same every single time. A laboratory management information system (LIMS) helps food producers ensure their brands’ reputation by managing quality assurance data through every step of the food production process. Housing and tracking this enormous quantity of data is critical to ensuring that every ingredient in a particular food product meets quality expectations—and a LIMS allows food manufacturers to act quickly if anything goes wrong.
A host of government agencies monitors the safety of thousands of products, from toys containing lead, automobiles with faulty electronics, to Escherichia coli-contaminated lettuce and spinach. As it relates to food safety in particular, there has been a fractured history of multiple regulatory agencies having partial authority to monitor the production or distribution of food in the United States. Passing the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) in 2011 has brought the monitoring and regulating of food under one roof, allowing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to have more far-reaching authority to compel producers to comply with new regulations and demand recalls if warranted. In early June, 2012 for example, www.foodsafety.gov listed more than a dozen recalls, ranging from Hannaford Supermarkets mini-frosted cookies with labels that did not list egg as an ingredient to Ben & Jerry’s ice cream containing fudge-covered wafers that had been “manufactured on shared equipment that processes peanuts and tree nuts.”