Food Safety

Saint Augustine is attributed as stating: “We make a ladder for ourselves of our vices, if we trample those same vices underfoot.”  Inspiring words...and tangentially,

During our conversations with regulatory folks, a common theme has developed.   Overwhelmingly, regulators have stressed the importance of a “culture of food safety”.   This means that food safety isn’t relegated to only a few individuals in a plant. Instead, a culture of food safety is one where a business has inclusively brought in ALL stakeholders, from CEOs to part-time employees to learn, practice, and respect food safety standards.   Instead of viewing food safety as only rules that haveto be followed or marks to simply check off on a sheet, food safety becomes a mindset and unifying goal across the plant and across the company.

At Nelson-Jameson, we never take chances when it comes to food safety, and neither should you. That's why we've put together a comprehensive flyer that is filled with the products you need to create an effective food safety program in your plant. Even more promising than the quality products is the manufacturers that are represented—we’ve included top products from 3M™, Hygiena™, Nasco, and Neogen®. Let us help you implement the Environmental Testing Solutions that work for your plant.

For more information

The need to be seen is critical for employee safety, especially for those who work around moving vehicles and equipment. This is why we have a wide range of high-visibility apparel that meets the ANSI/ISEA 107-2015 Standard.

Take a look at our high-visibility products here!

The ANSI/ISEA 107-2015 standard provides a uniform, authoritative guide for the design, performance specifications, and use of high-visibility and reflective apparel, including safety vests, shirts, pants, and outerwear. The standard breaks down high-visibility apparel into Types

Nelson-Jameson has expanded their color-coded program once again with the release of their 2019 Color-Coded Catalog. This year's catalog has grown to 56 pages of products that help to prevent allergen migration and cross-contamination. From the lab to the processing line, Nelson-Jameson has the color-coded products you need to produce safe, quality food.

In addition to having the most extensive color-coded program in the industry, we also have the most color options! Nelson-Jameson is now proud to offer gray, brown and lime products from Remco/Vikan® to help meet all your color-coded needs. The expanded catalog also includes new items like Color-Coded Cable Ties, Flagged Angle Brooms, Nylon Scrapers and more!

For more

Nelson-Jameson is proud to partner with Valcour Process Technologies to provide our customers with the equipment needed to inspect a wide assortment of product to prevent contamination. The Shield Allegro is a powerful X-ray inspection system that provides a higher level of inspection over traditional metal detectors.

While metal detectors provide reliable and robust contaminant detection technology, X-ray inspection technology
helps to ensure improved product quality by providing these additional benefits:

• Designed to inspect a wide assortment of packages up to 450 mm (17.7") wide and 254 mm (10") high. Products are typically inspected after packaging but can be inspected as raw product or packaged in a box.
• Detects smaller sizes of stainless steel (2-2.5 mm vs. 6-8 mm), as well as a variety of other contaminants that aren't possible with a metal detector.
• Easy to use, 17" touch screen display provides a digital trail of images for each product

In recent months, it has come to our attention that there has been an increase in quality problems caused by Heterofermentative lactic bacteria that are not from starter cultures. These bacteria have been found growing on biofilms in the pasteurizer regen section of milk HTST’s, in some silage inoculants, in dairy powders and liquids used to fortify milk for cheesemaking, and on individual farms with certain cleaning issues. Once these are in the milk, they can’t be removed by pasteurization and will carry through into the cheese and whey powder by-products.

The Center for Dairy Research (CDR) in Madison has seen an increase in quality defects in cheese including off flavors such as “sour” gas formation in retail packages of cheese and cracking defects in blocks of cheese. Many companies are starting to include specifications for low spore count non-fat powders, liquid condensed skim and UF milk products, and also whey powders used in many other foods.

In the demanding everyday life of a food manufacturer it can be hard to slow down and think about the safety of the products being manufactured. Everything from the ingredients that come in the door to the way the product is shipped out to the customer, all have to be monitored for safety. That is what the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) is all about, making sure the ingredients, the process, and how the end product is shipped out reduces the level of risk to the consumer. The manufacturing facility has to ask, what can be done to prevent the various risks in the plant from happening and causing a recall?

A Food Safety Plan is a robust, detailed plan that is meant to anticipate and meet these challenges. A cohesive plan is based on food safety principles which include: hazard analysis, preventative controls, supply-chain programs, and a recall plan. For smaller businesses, putting a Food Safety Plan in place and maintaining that Plan can be daunting. Where do you start? Making

Using Metal Detectable Products in your facility is a great way to ensure the product that you ship out does not contain foreign materials. Metal Detectable Products are products that can be detected by a metal detector. In plastic products, such as pens, a metallic pigment is added to the resin during the manufacturing process, and it is this pigment that is actually detected by the metal detector. Other products, earplugs for example, contain a stainless steel ball bearing, which is then detected by the metal detector.

This past November, Nelson-Jameson and one of our key suppliers, 3M™ Food Safety, launched an experiment aimed at critically looking into understanding and seeking out solutions related to food safety. Contingents from both 3M and Nelson-Jameson were able to sit down with representatives from several major West Coast food production facilities at the Fess Parker Doubletree in Santa Barbara, California.  

The aim was a simple one…to hear out the challenges that customers are facing, and to dig into ways that Nelson-Jameson, a supplier focused on helping our customers deliver safe, quality food to the market could be of assistance. Along with that, working with 3M, an innovator in research and development of food safety-focused products (including Petrifilm™, the