Food processing machinery is experiencing some incredible innovations, from intelligent robots to energy-efficient motors for food and beverage processing. Adopting these emerging technologies in your food and beverage processing facility can provide valuable benefits, such as improved food safety, greater efficiency and higher productivity. Following are five advances in food processing machinery that are transforming the industry.

Next Generation Energy-Efficient Motors

Energy efficiency is a growing concern across all industries, and it’s not just about reducing carbon footprints. Cutting back on emissions due to power consumption is certainly important, but food and beverage companies can also experience monetary benefits from optimizing their electricity usage.

Subscribe to the Food Safety Tech weekly newsletter to stay up-to-date on the latest news and information on food safety.Today’s next-gen motors for food and beverage processing are becoming much more energy-efficient right out of the box. The rise of soft-start and variable frequency drive engines is playing a key role in these innovations.

Soft-start motors cause less stress on machinery by protecting devices from sudden power surges. They start up using a slightly lower, limited initial charge rather than a sudden full charge. This can be compared to waking up with versus without an alarm clock—the former involves waking up abruptly while the latter is less stressful. The result is that soft-start motors allow machinery to warm up more gently and ease into operation, rather than straining electrical components with a sudden influx of energy.

Variable frequency drive motors use much less energy than other motor options. Unlike variable speed drive motors, variable frequency drive motor technology is limited specifically to AC motors. A variable frequency drive allows an AC motor to change its speed by changing the frequency of the power going through the motor. A variable frequency drive is essentially a control system for machinery engines, allowing them to start up with a lower voltage drop, similar to soft-start motors, and the speed can be adjusted to fit the unique needs of specific devices and tasks.

These energy-efficient motors also tend to be smaller in volume and weight than their conventional counterparts.

Soft Robotic Grippers

Automation, including the use of robotics, in the food and beverage industry is already happening. These technologies can deliver significant benefit as businesses struggle to keep up with demand even with fewer employees. However, processing foods like pastries, fruit or bread can be difficult with robots because their stiff grippers crush soft items when trying to pick them up. Soft grippers solve this problem.

One soft gripper designed for handling delicate food items was inspired by octopi and squids. The rubber fingers inflate and deflate using pressurized air so they open and close to precise dimensions. The gripper is nimble enough to lift items as delicate as marshmallows.

Autonomous AI Robots

Not only can automation help companies struggling with labor shortages, it can also help improve food processing efficiency. Autonomous robots, often powered by AI, are incredibly efficient at performing repetitive tasks. They can get more done in less time with fewer mistakes compared to the average employee. Food processing companies can use these robots to perform repetitive, mundane tasks that don’t appeal to employees. Workers can then be reskilled, upskilled or reassigned to more engaging and important roles.

IoT Machinery Monitoring

The Internet of Things (IoT) makes food processing machinery more intelligent and inter-connected. IoT can be used in various ways in the food and beverage industry, but it is especially helpful for monitoring and optimizing operations on the manufacturing floor. Sensors collect and relay data to a central hub in real-time. That information can be used to inform automated systems or production timelines.

IoT sensors can reveal inefficiencies and bottlenecks in production, giving companies concrete goals to act on. They can be used to monitor the health of food processing machinery, allowing for predictive maintenance, which involves performing tuneups on equipment as soon as signs of a potential malfunction appear.

The agriculture industry is exploring IoT, as well. For example, farmers and water management companies are using it in conjunction with AI algorithms to improve irrigation systems, cut energy costs and improve water usage.

Automated Food and Facility Safety

Health and safety are among the foremost priorities for every food and beverage company. Technological advances are making it easier for companies to stay on top of health and safety measures.

For example, food processing and storing companies can use AI to autonomously monitor and regulate temperature, helping prevent the growth and spread of E. coli and other diseases. This is achieved using IoT thermostats that relay real-time temperature data to an AI algorithm, which keeps an eye on temps throughout the facility and makes adjustments as needed.

Food processing machinery is in the midst of some truly exciting advancements that are helping businesses in the industry provide better service, products and working conditions. Cutting-edge motors for food and beverage equipment allow companies to save money on energy costs, while next-gen robotics open the door to a wealth of automation possibilities.

With the help of AI and IoT, food and beverage companies can ensure their operations are running as smoothly as possible. There will certainly be more incredible advancements in food processing technology in the years ahead.

The post Five Advances in Food Processing Machinery Driving Growth appeared first on FoodSafetyTech.

Agronomy, Vol. 12, Pages 1865: 3DPhenoMVS: A Low-Cost 3D Tomato Phenotyping Pipeline Using 3D Reconstruction Point Cloud Based on Multiview Images

Agronomy doi: 10.3390/agronomy12081865

Authors: Yinghua Wang Songtao Hu He Ren Wanneng Yang Ruifang Zhai

Manual phenotyping of tomato plants is time consuming and labor intensive. Due to the lack of low-cost and open-access 3D phenotyping tools, the dynamic 3D growth of tomato plants during all growth stages has not been fully explored. In this study, based on the 3D structural data points generated by employing structures from motion algorithms on multiple-view images, we proposed a 3D phenotyping pipeline, 3DPhenoMVS, to calculate 17 phenotypic traits of tomato plants covering the whole life cycle. Among all the phenotypic traits, six of them were used for accuracy evaluation because the true values can be generated by manual measurements, and the results showed that the R2 values between the phenotypic traits and the manual ones ranged from 0.72 to 0.97. In addition, to investigate the environmental influence on tomato plant growth and yield in the greenhouse, eight tomato plants were chosen and phenotyped during seven growth stages according to different light intensities, temperatures, and humidities. The results showed that stronger light intensity and moderate temperature and humidity contribute to a higher biomass and higher yield. In conclusion, we developed a low-cost and open-access 3D phenotyping pipeline for tomato and other plants, and the generalization test was also complemented on other six species, which demonstrated that the proposed pipeline will benefit plant breeding, cultivation research, and functional genomics in the future.

A new study in Nature Food has found that food’s transport emissions, once thought to be a negligibly small proportion of food systems emissions, are much higher than previously estimated - and that the carbon footprint estimates of imported fruits and vegetables will be particularly impacted. 

If you work in the controlled environment agriculture (CEA) sector, this is a very important piece of research to be aware of. However, we know that everyone is feeling a little bit stretched right now, with the impacts of the energy crisis already being felt across the industry and harvest season for seasonal greenhouse growers in full swing. So to save you getting bogged down in the details, we had our Food Systems Researcher, India Langley, summarise the study and its CEA implications for you. 

What are the research findings? 

The report estimates that emissions from global food-miles are about 3 Gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent. This is 3.5 to 7.5 times higher than previously thought.  

The new higher figure equates to nearly 30% of food-system emissions, or 19% of total food-system emissions if you also include emissions associated with land-use change (which we think you should include!). The proportion is much higher than for other non-food commodities, where freight accounts for only around 7% of emissions.

When it comes to transport emissions, how the food is transported is crucial; so it’s not quite as simple as distance travelled. Airfreighting has the highest intensity, followed by road transport, with shipping having the lowest impact. The temperature matters too. Temperature-controlled transportation releases more than three times the amount of CO2 equivalent than ambient transport. Fruits and vegetables were singled out in the study as typically needing temperature controlled transportation, often internationally. Because of this, their food-mile emissions are higher than foods transported at ambient temperatures. The study highlighted that vegetable and fruit consumption makes up over a third of global food-miles emissions. This new significantly higher estimate of their transport emissions is nearly twice what is emitted during their production - though it should be noted that production emissions for fruits and vegetables are relatively low compared to other foods. The highest carbon emissions in the study were still attributed to beef. 

A hypothetical scenario where food imports were completely replaced with domestic supply was modelled in the study. While an intervention like this would be impossible in a real world setting, the model provided useful insights. A wholly domestic food consumption scenario would reduce food-miles emissions by 0.27 Gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent and food production emissions by 0.11 Gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent. Unsurprisingly, affluent counties have the highest global food transport emissions. Just by containing food chains within high-income countries, the model found it would reduce transport emissions by 0.24 Gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent and production emissions by 0.39 Gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent. 

A summary of recommendations 

What do these new findings mean and what are the recommendations from the authors? This more detailed accounting of food’s transport emissions asks rich nations to reconsider the trade-off between localised food versus international food trade. 

More locally produced plants 

The study concludes with a recommendation that to address food system emissions, we must increase domestic food production in high-income countries and combine this with the current suggested strategy of reducing the consumption of animal products in favour of a more plant-oriented diet. Both the study and Nature’s recent press about it stress that this does not mean we should reduce the amount of fruits and vegetables consumed. 

Investing in peri-urban agriculture

The study highlights that a strategy that both supports a more plant-oriented diet and local production could be supported by “tapping into the considerable potential of peri-urban agriculture in nourishing large numbers of urban residents.” 

So what does this mean for controlled environment agriculture? 

Well, first it means that if you’ve conducted an environmental impact assessment comparing your indoor grown produce with imported produce, your figures may not be wholly accurate. It is important to determine these parameters to aid decision making towards when a CEA system such as a greenhouse or vertical farm will have a preferable environmental advantage, and when it won’t. It’s imperative that, as an industry, we really understand the numbers and that we’re as transparent as possible about them. Over the past four years I’ve spoken to hundreds of people in the industry and the common thread that runs through every person is that they want to make a difference. Without a true understanding of environmental accounting, you won’t be able to differentiate where you can make positive change and where you could do more harm than good. 

At LettUs Grow, we’re already looking at going back to the drawing board for some of our data. For example, our current estimates say that a DROP & GROW running on wind power is preferable to fresh produce imported from further than 397 km by airfreight or 658 km by refrigerated lorry. However, in light of this new study, the distances food needs to travel before being replaced by produce from a DROP & GROW container may shorten significantly - opening up new areas where container farmed produce is a sustainable and viable alternative to imported fruits and vegetables. 

The research also indicates that if you’re looking to reduce the global warming potential of food miles, focusing on produce that needs temperature controlled transport will result in the most carbon savings. This information can help guide the types of plants you invest research and development into. That is to say, you’ll see a greater environmental benefit from growing berries than you would from growing, for example, grains. This is because such a large percentage of their total emissions from seed to spoon are associated with refrigerated transport. 

Fundamentally, if this research is listened to, it should hopefully act as a wake-up call and galvanise support for increasing domestic food production. In the UK, we import over three quarters of our fruits and vegetables (Source: Feeding Britain) and our horticulture sector has been woefully stripped back to just 3% of farm land use. The study’s authors specifically advocate utilising the potential within peri-urban agriculture. CEA facilities, from greenhouses to plant-factories, are well placed technical solutions for enabling year-round production in peri-urban environments. This research has the potential to generate increased interest in this type of horticulture as a viable alternative to importing certain produce. Rich nations need to reconsider the consequences of their food strategies - the impacts of importing fresh produce can no longer be written off as “negligible”. 

Did you find this article useful? If you’d like more breakdowns of industry research or any specific studies summarised, please feel free to forward them to communications@lettusgrow.com or join our mailing list for more updates. 

Creating a company culture that embraces food safety is paramount to protecting your business and end users. But, developing a strong food safety culture takes time, effort and a buy-in from leadership.

We spoke with Vanessa Coffman, Ph.D., director of the Alliance to STOP Foodborne Illness, to discuss what it takes to create a company culture committed to food safety and what is holding companies and employees back from speaking up and taking action when safety concerns are identified.

Food Safety Tech (FST): How do companies get started in implementing a strong food safety culture?

Dr. Coffman: I think it’s really important to remember that every company in the food space already has a food safety culture. They may just not know it. So, a good first step is to assess your current food safety culture. What’s going right? What’s going wrong? From there, outline where you would like to go.

FST: How do you assess your current food safety culture?

Dr. Coffman: Talking with your employees and asking questions is a good start. There are some questionnaires available online to help you assess your current culture. It’s hard, though, because a lot of them are not scientifically validated, largely because food safety culture is amorphous and it’s also new.

We have a number of resources available on our website, including a Food Safety Culture Toolkit for businesses.

FST: How do company leaders motivate employees to play an active role in ensuring safe food processing and handling?

Dr. Coffman: That is really, really important. You can incentivize people through a rewards and recognition program, which is what a lot of our Alliance member-companies are doing.

I also think that getting into the heart and not just the mind of the employee is important. We have a lot of video resources and stories from foodborne illness survivors and people who have lost loved ones to foodborne illness. These are good motivators to help your team understand what can happen and how important every single person’s role is in the the production of safe food.

FST: How are companies incentivizing their employees to embrace food safety practices?

Dr. Coffman: It can be as simple as recognizing an employee of the month—a food safety culture employee of the month—and having a parking spot dedicated to that person or putting their name in the company newsletter.

Sometimes those big outward shows of recognition aren’t the best for every employee, and maybe somebody would rather get a little monetary bonus. Some businesses have taken employees or teams that have done really well out to lunch with the executives or someone who is well respected in the company. Getting an hour off from work may be a really great reward.

There are a lot of example of ways you can incentivize folks to do the right thing, but ultimately you want a culture of people wanting to do the right thing. That’s the most important aspect of a good food safety culture. You’re not doing it because you’re going to win a prize, but because it’s the right thing to do.

FST: Who, ultimately, is responsible for spearheading and developing a company’s food safety culture?

Dr. Coffman: That’s a really complicated question. Everybody needs to be a part of it and everybody needs to buy in to building a positive food safety culture at a company. That includes frontline workers, maintenance workers and the top executives.

We have been doing a webinar series in partnership with the FDA, and we have gotten a lot of questions about who should be leading these efforts. While it is the front-line workers that have the ability to stop the line, note a problem or report a safety issue, if you do not have buy in from your executives, there is no motivation for the people on the front line to do the right thing. So, getting the company leaders—the C-suite and the middle management people—involved is critical.

FST: Do you have any tips or recommendations on how to speak to the people in the C-suite to help them understand the importance of food safety?

Dr. Coffman: A lot of times people who are not involved in food safety day-to-day are incentivized by different things or see things a little bit differently. Some of things we have found that people who are in the C-suite respond to or are concerned with include the cost of a recall, the cost of getting sued and the cost of brand damage. Those things are really, really important for business leaders to understand. But, as with other employees, you also need reach their hearts.

Join us at the Food Safety Consortium in Parsippany, NJ, October 19-21 and take part in our panel discussion, “Communicating to the C-Suite.”

Everybody has a family, everybody has friends, everybody has people they love and they would never want to see those people get hurt by something that they fed them or by something that their company created. So, really tapping into the hearts is important in addition to presenting those cold, hard numbers, which you do sometimes need.

FST: What prevents employees from being proactive about food safety or raising safety concerns?

Dr. Coffman: Termination. Getting in trouble. A lot of the companies within the Alliance have said that every single employee in their organization is allowed to stop the line. Their employees know that you will never get in trouble for stopping something if you see a problem. Unfortunately, that is not as commonplace as it should be. People who are whistleblowers get in trouble. People who bring up problems to their bosses get in trouble. And when we’re talking about food safety, if you let things slip you are putting people in danger

FST: What is the biggest misconception about food safety culture?

Dr. Coffman: That this is a linear task. That this is something that you can just do and then it’s fixed and in place. It takes a lot of planning, a lot of energy and a lot of time.

Food safety culture is not something you have to do to meet an auditing requirement. The components are not going to be black and white, yes or no. This might seem frustrating at first to those who are used to following detailed checklists and written procedures, but once a positive, mature food safety culture is established, problem areas on your checklist will likely diminish.

The post How To Implement a Strong Food Safety Culture appeared first on FoodSafetyTech.