Food and Beverage
 Ensuring a safe food supply is a national priority, for its citizens and to reduce barriers to international trade. Analytical laboratories test foods and raw materials for numerous adulterants including microbiological, chemical, radiological and genetic to name a few. Food and beverage laboratories also analyze foods for authenticity and to ensure that specifications are met. Historically the food safety inspections relied on an organoleptic analysis, which has been shown to be less effective than rigorous sampling and analysis of critical control points throughout the process. Historically food manufacturers and regulators have relied on spot checks and random sampling, which tended to be reactive in response to outbreaks or out of specification product or raw material rather than preventative and much less efficient.

In 1998, the US government, specifically the Department of Agriculture promulgated HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) for meat and poultry processing plants. The FDA established HACCP in the seafood industry with a final rule in 1995. A final rule for the juice industry was released in January 2001, and will be phased in for businesses based on their size (smaller businesses will have longer to prepare) until 2004. An underlying principle of HACCP is to ensure that food manufactures have a logical, science based system that provides complete traceability from the farm to the table.

HACCP involves seven principles and requires manufacturers to examine their process, monitor each key step and target those points which may provide the greatest possibility of contamination, establish a system of corrective action and verification.
  1. Analyze hazards. Potential hazards associated with a food and measures to control those hazards are identified. The hazard could be biological, such as a microbe; chemical, such as a toxin; or physical, such as ground glass or metal fragments.
  2. Identify critical control points. These are points in a food's production--from its raw state through processing and shipping to consumption by the consumer--at which the potential hazard can be controlled or eliminated. Examples are cooking, cooling, packaging, and metal detection.
  3. Establish preventive measures with critical limits for each control point. For a cooked food, for example, this might include setting the minimum cooking temperature and time required to ensure the elimination of any harmful microbes.
  4. Establish procedures to monitor the critical control points. Such procedures might include determining how and by whom cooking time and temperature should be monitored.
  5. Establish corrective actions to be taken when monitoring shows that a critical limit has not been met--for example, reprocessing or disposing of food if the minimum cooking temperature is not met.
  6. Establish procedures to verify that the system is working properly--for example, testing time-and-temperature recording devices to verify that a cooking unit is working properly.
  7. Establish effective recordkeeping to document the HACCP system. This would include records of hazards and their control methods, the monitoring of safety requirements and action taken to correct potential problems. Each of these principles must be backed by sound scientific knowledge: for example, published microbiological studies on time and temperature factors for controlling food borne pathogens.

Your Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) will play an integral role in each of the seven HACCP principles. It will also allow the laboratory to work with the manufacturing division/s to rapidly identify any factors that may effect the production of a safe final product. Poor laboratory data management and ineffective communication with the manufacturing facilities can result in wasted goods, lost revenues and possibly even product recalls.

With years of data management experience, ATL Project Managers and Data Specialists can help you:

  • Perform a Needs Assessment of your current laboratory data management system.
  • Provide you with a guidance document, especially for your operations (following an on-site assessment) and identify tools or processes which should be implemented to assist you in addressing the requirements of HACCP.
  • Validate your food and beverage LIMS solution.
  • Incorporate practical solutions to ensure that vital process data, final product test are being captured and provided to those that require the information to make decision in real time.

Below are a few of the many requirements of Food and Beverage Laboratories and the way in which ATL's LIMS and data management products satisfy those requirements.

Food and Beverage Industry Requirements

ATL’s Data Management Solutions

Affordability and ease of configuration and reporting.

ATL’s LIMS solutions for Food and Beverage Laboratories are sold in modules, so that users need only purchase the modules that they need. ATL’s LIMS Solutions feature user definable screen captions for rapid utilization and over 5 dozen reports are included.

Integration with common instruments utilized in food and beverage testing to increase productivity.

A library of over 350 instruments that have previously been integrated with ATL's LIMS products is available to clients.

Provide complete trace back capabilities, from farm to table.

With ATL's integrated data management solutions, retrieving data by project, data range or site is achieved in minutes with a full Chain of Custody, audit trail and security.

Compliance with regulatory requirements, HACCP, Codex and full support of CFR 21 part 11.

ATL's LIMS Solutions meet and in many cases exceed current Food and Beverage Laboratory requirements, in anticipation of future requirements.

Remote access to view data in real-time, view trends or the ability to access and print pdf Certificate of Analysis reports from remote site.

With ATL's Result Point™, users can remotely access data status in real-time, review and print reports with a secure browser.

Solid system support and training for end users and database administrators.

ATL is ISO 9001 Certified and has a strong support and training program in place to ensure our clients success.

The ability to monitor processes in real-time and view trends providing a business advantage.

With integrated QA/QC, users have the ability to rapidly monitor processes, generate control charts, view trends and generate numerous management reports.

Flexible solutions that are built on proven technology which is fully scalable to grow with the laboratory.

As an Oracle Business Alliance Partner and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, only industry standard tools are utilized in ATL’s LIMS solutions.

Ability to integrate multiple locations (remote laboratories) into a single database to assist in HACCP compliance.

Inherent scalability and integration in the LIMS allows multiple sites to consolidate data for warehousing while enforcing permission-based access to data.