Solving the headache of a foreign object

Despite the implementation of food safety management systems, foreign objects still manage to find their way into food products. A physical contaminant may pose a major risk to a consumer’s safety, and threaten a brand’s reputation. Establishing the identity of a foreign object is crucial for managing its occurrence and preventing any reoccurrences. 

What is defined as a foreign object?

A foreign object is a physical contaminant that is not expected in a food product.

A foreign object may be endogenous (originating from the source of the food product, such as a chicken bone in a chicken sandwich) or exogenous (originating from the external environment, such as a piece of metal in a chicken sandwich).

Some common examples of foreign objects that are found in food products include:

• Glass
• Polymers and plastics
• Metal fragments
• Stones
• Insects
• Human and animal hair
• Plant material

What is the impact of finding a foreign object?

Although it is always undesirable to find a foreign object in a food product, other factors play a role in determining the overall impact or damage to a brand’s reputation. These include the potential health risks associated with the foreign object’s occurrence, and the ‘reasonability’ of the foreign object’s occurrence in the specific food product.

For example, it is undesirable but not unreasonable to find a cherry stalk in a cherry pie, and the occurrence of the cherry stalk has a low associated health risk. Therefore, the potential impact of the foreign object’s occurrence is low. Finding a cherry pit in a cherry pie is also undesirable but not unreasonable; however, its occurrence poses a health risk, since a consumer could chip or break a tooth when consuming the contaminated cherry pie. Therefore, the potential impact of the foreign object’s occurrence is high. If a glass shard were to be found in a cherry pie, the potential impact would be very high, as the occurrence of this foreign object is undesirable, unreasonable and poses a major health risk to consumers.

What do the regulations say about foreign objects?

Certain regulations and standards in the Agricultural Products Standards Act refer to “extraneous matter” or “foreign matter” in food products. For example:

• 835, the Regulations relating to the grading, packing and marking of honey and mixtures of bee products intended for sale in the Republic of South Africa, indicates that honey should be free from particles foreign to its composition (such as mould, insects or insect debris, sand, etc.).
• 322, the Regulations regarding control over the sale of rooibos and rooibos mixtures in the Republic of South Africa, indicates that all rooibos and rooibos mixtures may not contain more than 1% foreign matter, and defines “foreign matter” as any matter not derived from rooibos plants, with the exception of permitted additives.
• 653, the Regulations relating to the quality, packing and marking of dried fruit intended for sale in the Republic of South Africa, defines foreign matter, unspecified foreign matter and extraneous vegetable matter. The regulation provides tolerances for the latter two in each type of dried deciduous fruit product; and indicates that dried fruit shall be free from foreign matter.
• “foreign matter” means any stone, glass, material or similar object that does not naturally form part of the dried fruit concerned;
• “extraneous vegetable matter” means any plant material of the plant concerned which are not normally present in the dried fruit, excluding stems with regard to vine fruit;
• “unspecified foreign matter” means any material, other than extraneous vegetable matter and foreign matter, not normally present in, on or between the dried fruit.

If the relevant regulations for a particular food product do not specify definitions or tolerances for foreign object occurrence, then good manufacturing practices should be assumed to ensure that food products remain safe for human consumption.

How do foreign objects enter food products?

Foreign objects may enter food products at any step of the supply chain. They may enter products accidentally or be added deliberately.

Deliberate contamination may be a form of sabotage in which the intent of adding a foreign object to a food product is to cause public harm, or financial and/or reputational damage. This would indicate the failure of a TACCP programme. Deliberate contamination may also be related to a form of food fraud, which would indicate the failure of a VACCP programme. Accidental contamination may be due to the failure of a HACCP programme.

Hence, the occurrence of a foreign object typically indicates a failure in a food safety management system.

Why is it important to have a foreign object analysed?

Establishing the identity and origin of a foreign object can provide important evidence for root-cause analyses and risk assessments. These investigations are crucial for determining the short-term risk of an incident (e.g., is a recall necessary?) and preventing similar incidents from reoccurring.

How are foreign objects analysed?

Foreign objects can be analysed using a number of techniques, including Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS) and Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS).

Are foreign object analyses accredited?

Due to the custom nature of foreign object analyses, the methods are generally not accredited.

What are the limitations of foreign object analyses?

Methods are limited to the type of information that they can provide. For example, testing can confirm that a foreign object is glass, and identify the type of glass, but it cannot determine which specific window pane or glass container it originated from. Similarly, testing can confirm whether a foreign hair is of human or animal origin and give information regarding the ethnicity of the human or the species of animal, but often cannot match the foreign hair to a specific individual. Read more on hair analysis here.

FACTS offers custom analytical testing to find answers to any question and solutions to every problem. This includes foreign object identification services. If you are interested in this service or any of our other testing services, please contact us.

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