Food safety with Ishida: Do consumers really want to know what’s inside their food?

The issue with product contamination

Surveying 1,000 UK consumers, Ishida found that over half of respondents have had first-hand experience of a foreign body in their pre-packaged food, with a third reporting contaminants in meat and poultry, and over 40% in ready meals or food on-the-go products.

“In a highly competitive market, it’s important for food producers to maintain brand integrity, which comes from providing quality products that are free from any contamination. This has become even more challenging in the age of social media, where consumers can rapidly spread adverse information if they find any kind of contaminant in a product,” explains Ishida.

The survey found that respondents have seen contamination problems in all food sectors, making it clear that contaminants are an issue across all markets and something that needs to be tackled.

Ishida says, “Food producers have become even more vigilant in more contaminants within their facility. We are seeing an increasing amount of foreign body detection equipment and a move from the classical and more traditional metal detectors to X-ray technology.”

So what does the consumer think?

When asked how important it is for them to know that checks have been made for foreign materials, 71.6% of consumers said that checks were critical for meat and poultry products. And if a company only inspects 50% of its production, only 6% of consumers said that they would be suitability reassured about its commitment to food safety. Consumer reassurance rose to 74% when based on a 100% inspection rate, showing that the majority of consumers associate food safety with the level and consistency of inspection.

When it comes to unwanted foreign bodies in their foods, over 90% of consumers said they would be reassured to know that their pre-packaged food had been suitably inspected.

But what about the consumers who aren’t reassured? Ishida highlights that some consumers, regardless of thorough inspections, don’t understand the operation of food safety and the level of detection on offer.

Ishida says, “We have no real issues in our understanding of food safety. However, we operate in two broad areas – foreign body detection and pack seal integrity. Possibly the biggest challenge we and our customers face is in clearly understanding what is detectable with current technology. X-ray technology can detect foreign bodies, which have a density greater than water. This includes bones, stones, glass, ceramics and rubber.

“However, typically, a number of customers have the perception that X-ray can detect anything. [They] end up looking for paper, hair and insect contaminants, which is not feasible. Getting this message out in the market is often a challenge.”

Brand reputation and customer confidence go hand-in-hand, specifically when it involves product recalls. With recent recalls, such as Quorn’s chilled cocktail sausages that potentially contained traces of metal, companies have to be cautious in not losing customer confidence and loyalty and remember that consumers hold checks for packaged food at a higher standard than fresh products.

Ishida found that 35% of UK consumers said they would not buy a product again after a recall, while a third said that they would think again. Only a third said that a recall would not impact their decision making.

What should the food industry do now?

Following these insights, it’s key that the food industry invests in quality control equipment to ensure brand integrity. Ishida believes that when it comes to X-ray equipment, it’s often beneficial to select a machine with a sensor that is better than a company’s actual required detection rates. To put it simply, Ishida says that “typically the greater the difference between your test standards and the actual performance of a machine, the lower the potential false rejects within a particular application.”

And what are Ishida’s own plans to further improve food safety? “We are continually evolving our product portfolio and some initial activities, including combining technologies and also incorporating increased data management systems around quality control. This will facilitate food producers to check the quality of a particular pack in their production if they get a complaint from their customer.

“This is particularly important for X-ray systems which detect foreign bodies and is a classic reason for product recalls. With suitable data management systems, food producers can review an exact product that might have had a complaint to their customer. This can easily allow them to verify if the product left the factory with an issue or not, explains Ishida.”

It’s safe to say that consumers do care about food safety.  And although the majority seem to care, there is a small fraction of people who aren’t particularly interested or don’t understand. But Ishida says it wants all consumers to remember that “food safety is critical to all the products that they buy for themselves and their families. It’s imperative that they monitor brands and ensure that they go with food producers that are very active in maintaining high levels of food safety and in investing in quality control equipment.”