Besides the need for greater capacity, efficiency and profitability, rice processors are mindful of food safety in their operations.
Bühler’s Food Safety Initiative team shares how designing safety into every aspect of rice production is vital for each player in the supply chain.
It will also share how Hazard Analysis & Critical Control Points and optimized equipment design can support the industry in achieving safe, high quality product that meets regulatory and consumer expectations.
Team members Rustom Mistry, director, Sortex & Rice – Bühler Group China and Southeast Asia, Béatrice Conde-Petit, senior expert food science and technology, and Raymond Herbert, patent and regulatory specialist, tell us more.
Why do rice processors need to be mindful of food safety and hygiene in their facilities today?
Mistry: Consumers are becoming more conscious and demanding about a safe food supply.
They want quality food to prevent foodborne illnesses, which are the result of consuming contaminated foods, and rice, like any other crop, is at risk of contamination.
With supply chains becoming more complex, and the demand for rice rocketing, rice millers are forced to face the implications of producing contaminated product and are becoming more vigilant about safety.
For some time, the need to fulfil the requirements of certification and third party auditing meant that it was only exporters that faced the challenges of food safety.
However, as domestic and international food regulation agencies have put a greater emphasis on food safety, this issue has begun to spread inexorably onto the agenda for local rice producers as well.
What food safety concerns do rice processors have?
Conde-Petit: Similar safety concerns prevail throughout the supply chain and call for attention to food safety at every stage of production.
Contaminants that can enter rice include agricultural or processing chemicals, ranging from insecticides to factory lubricants.
There can be foreign materials, such as glass, metal, sticks and unwanted grains.
In addition, the rice might be contaminated with insects, molds, mycotoxins or bacteria.
More consumers now lack trust in their food supply and are anxious about the presence of these contaminants, particularly insects, heavy metals and processing adulterants, as well as unsound grains that will spoil their dishes.
Meanwhile, food safety for rice millers means addressing pest infestation that can lead to losses in storage, spoilage of rice due to molds and harmful bacteria, the removal of unsound grains and contamination with mycotoxins such as aflatoxin or by heavy metals. They must also manage the cleaning and disinfection of their equipment.
Significantly, in premium markets, processors of branded and further processed rice must also meet ever more stringent regulatory requirements, including those regarding the heavy metal content and levels of mycotoxin in rice.
As they need to comply with retailer audits of hygiene standards, they require equipment that is designed for hygiene and is easy to clean.
They must be able to eradicate pests and reduce the potential for post-processing infection by Bacillus Cereus, while using fewer and fewer chemicals.
These concerns reflect the breadth of risks affecting the production of safe, high quality rice.
How can rice processors address these concerns?
Mistry: While we have partnered with rice processors globally to produce high quality rice products, beautiful shiny rice does not guarantee food safety and careful attention is needed at every step of production in order to assess and eliminate the risks at each stage.
For rice processors, a formal food safety management system, supported by a HACCP program, is fundamental to ensuring food safety and integrity of the end product.
Regulators are also increasingly looking to HACCP as a mandatory requirement for all food processors and handlers.
Can you share with us more about a HACCP program?
Mistry: HACCP involves conducting a hazard analysis by assessing the contamination potential for each step of the production process and identifying measures to prevent or reduce the contamination or ‘hazard’.
Processing points where there is significant risk of contamination are determined as critical control points (CCP).
Critical limits need to be established for these, together with the corrective actions required to eliminate or control the hazard/contamination, if it arises.
Once the process is assessed, CCPs identified and the corrective actions established, processors can set up systems to monitor each CCP and maintain a record of the results of their monitoring.
There must be verification procedures to allow processors to monitor that their HACCP system is working well.
All documentation of sanitation logs, supplier agreements, shipping documents must be retained to allow cross-reference against any contamination that may arise.
Although HACCP cannot completely eliminate the risk of a hazard entering the rice product, it certainly helps to decrease the possibility to more acceptable levels.
As the old adage goes ‘without monitoring and measurement, it is impossible to control a process’, and HACCP, when effectively deployed – and, importantly, continuously reviewed and improved – goes a long way to bringing the risk of contamination down to acceptable levels.
How can rice processors achieve greater safety and hygiene in their facilities?
Mistry: The design of a plant and its equipment plays a fundamental role in preventing potential contamination.
If designed with clear zoning and pre-determined space for operation, maintenance and the movement of personnel, a plant will already be one step ahead in terms of providing an environment that fosters hygienic production.
A plant’s structure and the conduits for its utility supplies need to be constructed with sanitation in mind.
Critically, today’s plants must operate ‘dust free’ at all times, as areas where dust or rice particles can collect represent areas with significant potential for contamination.
Therefore, all equipment and accessories, such as bins and hoppers, must be designed to reduce the risk of dust build-up.
What constitute a well-designed equipment and plant?
Mistry: The ease and speed of cleaning is vital; coupled with the avoidance of any crevices or hard edges on the housing or internally that can allow dust to accumulate.
Bühler equipment for example features easy access through easily removable machine covers and screens that are simple and quick to change; and sealing systems that prevent any dust leaking out into the plant.
The equipment is designed to be either well sealed to the floor or clear of the floor, to ensure thorough cleaning at the base of the machine.
The plant should be designed to have an ‘airlock entry’, to avoid dust coming into the plant, and have smooth flooring, sealed and rounded off where it meets the walls, to avoid crevices where dust can built-up.
A well-designed aspiration system must be built in to every modern plant seeking to meet today’s stringent standards of good product quality, sanitation and hygiene.
Any aspiration system must be engineered well, in order to meet the stringent criteria necessary to achieve a ‘dust free’ plant.
What can rice processors benefit from using Bühler equipment?
Herbert: We provide certification for all our machines to support rice processors in achieving compliance and HACCP fulfilment, as all materials that come into contact with the food stream are required to have suitable documentation, to prove they are safe for food contact.
Plastics are particularly subject to stringent controls, when used in food contact areas, and increasing awareness of the potential for constituent materials used in plastics being absorbed by food, particularly by fatty or acidic food products, mean that stringent controls now apply to their use.
The controlled use of plastics and stainless steel components prevents entrapment of product in recesses or voids.
Each piece of equipment is supplied with instructions and advice on cleaning methods and materials, cleaning intervals and maintenance.
We have even carried out surveys to examine the dust emissions during sorting and can provide rice processors with a validated report to illustrate the minute levels of dust present around a Bühler machine, when sorting grain.
Mistry: Our equipment offers flexibility for the future.
The equipment design and automation ensure immediate start-up with no choking in plant. The pneumatic slide gates automatically close following power cuts, preventing the machine from crushing product during the restart, thus reducing brokens and increasing yield.
Conde-Petit: Bühler and the Bühler Food Safety Initiative can support processors towards achieving the ultimate in safe and high quality end product, through consultancy and advice, as well as the highest quality hygienic solutions.
We can advise customers on how to control mycotoxin levels.
For instance, we can provide details of how losses due to pests or the formation of mycotoxin can be cut through appropriate drying and storage.
We are also building our knowledge around heavy metal contamination and methods for controlling them.
Our grain sorting capabilities can be used to remove contaminants, such as insects, sticks, metal and other grains for example, to help achieve the highest quality, safer end product.
Where are Bühler equipment installed at?
Mistry: We have already installed processing plants throughout the world, to support rice processors in meeting today’s stringent safety and hygiene requirements.
In the US, we worked with the largest mill in California, on 75 tons per hour (t/h) facility that transforms paddy to white rice, 24 hours a day, with the minimum risk of contamination.
In India, we worked with an export of basmati and other rice varieties to create the ideal layout of its multi-floor system, with low operating costs, giving maximum yield, with low breakages, at a rate of 20 t/h.
Other installations include a fully automated plant, which increased the capacity and lowered operating costs for a Thai rice exporter, a 40t/h paddy to white rice production process in China and a Pneumatic RiceLift for the pneumatic conveying of Japonica rice in Japan.
The RiceLift gives flexible, residue free conveying, eliminates grain breakage, and helps Japanese processors fulfil on the high standards of traceability, sanitation and HACCP they require.
What can rice processors expect in the future?
Mistry: Rice processing plants in future will inevitably move from manual operation to industrialised and automated plants, based on both single and multi-level floor concepts, capable of processing multiple different rice varieties.
They will feature the ultimate in product safety and hygiene, tracking product, to ensure that the end consumers feel safe about the food they buy.
Currently, this is critical to exporters, but will also affect domestic producers, in the longer term.
Food safety has been a topic that has been addressed for a long time in the food industry and will now be enforced in many rice exporting countries, as the basic prerequisite for export.
Story by Buhler.
