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How to use inspection equipment to reduce food waste

Inspection equipment serves double duty for manufacturers, ensuring product safety while also diminishing food waste.

Many food and beverage manufacturers are using their inspection equipment to mitigate food loss and waste. Photo courtesy of Mettler Toledo.
Many food and beverage manufacturers are using their inspection equipment to mitigate food loss and waste. Photo courtesy of Mettler Toledo.

Inspection equipment can be used for more than just food safety purposes. Many food and beverage manufacturers use their inspection technologies to not only ensure product quality and operational efficiency, but to also reduce food waste and loss, according to Robert Rogers, senior food and safety adviser for METTLER TOLEDO Product Inspection.

Food and beverage manufacturers invest in inspection equipment like metal detection, X-ray, vision systems and checkweighers to ensure foods are free of contamination and properly weighed, coded and labeled. But inspection equipment can play an integral role in reducing food waste — a growing problem in which 1.3 billion tons of food worldwide is either lost or thrown away every year.

“These inspection systems can help reduce food loss and waste,” Rogers says. “Often it is a combination of these technologies that deliver the highest levels of operational efficiency, ensuring that products meet regulatory and brand standards, preventing costly and wasteful rejections or recalls.”

Integrating contamination detection technologies early in the production process will help remove any unwanted foreign bodies from products. It protects downstream processing equipment, ensures contaminants are removed before significant value is added and offers the potential to rework nonconforming products. This, in turn, helps minimize food waste and associated costs, according to Rogers.

False rejects during inspection are common sources of waste. Rogers recommends adjusting X-ray and metal detection settings so that only nonconforming products are rejected, thereby preventing good product from being discarded. Regularly testing detection sensitivity levels and taking advantage of fully automated product setup and changeovers ensure that detection sensitivity is always at an optimum level, he says.

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