Sensor Network for HACCP Food Safety Management

INTRODUCTION AS its name suggests, HACCP (hazard analysis critical control point) combines the concepts of hazard analysis and critical control points. Unlike past approaches to food safety management that depended in a large part on experience, HACCP combines analysis of the hazards in each process from acceptance of raw materials through to production and shipping with continuous monitoring and recording of the critical control points to prevent these hazards from occuring. The adoption of HACCP at food production sites in Japan gained momentum after partial amendments to the Food Sanitation Law in May 1996 established an approvals regime for comprehensive sanitation controlled manufacturing processes that incorporates HACCP. As of the end of March 2010, approval has been granted to a total of 564 food processing facilities in Japan. 12 steps have been defined stipulating how to go about introducing HACCP-based food safety management to ensure it operates efficiently and effectively. Step 8 involves setting objective management criteria, step 9 specifies how to go about monitoring, and step 12 specifies the recording and storage of the monitoring results. Requirements included that the monitoring system be able to highlight immediately any deviation of measurements outside the management criteria and that the frequency of measurement be adequate to prevent the hazard from occurring. Whereas typical techniques used in the past for monitoring food safety at food production sites included periodic manual measurements or sensors equipped with their own memory such as temperature loggers, the amount of work needed to comply with the criteria stipulated by HACCP was large enough to create a need for new systems. Also because installing new sensor systems at existing food production sites or warehouses required the laying of cables, it tended to take a long time and be expensive. On the other hand, as well as being a tool for the application of HACCP to food safety management, there are also other forward-looking requirements including playing a role as part of a strategy for differentiating companies from their competitors by helping with improvements such as better product quality and reliability. Accordingly, it is important that management and administration departments, production departments, and quality assurance departments share monitoring data and put it to strategic use. OVERVIEW: An increasing number of companies are incorporating HACCP practices into their food manufacturing processes in response to growing public concern about food safety and security. Monitoring is an essential part of HACCP and this article describes the features of a Hitachi wireless sensor network designed to perform this task efficiently together with a case study of its use. Hitachi’s sensor network information system can perform monitoring of food production and distribution in real time with no loss of data and its features include sharing of information across a network and easy installation on existing equipment using wireless communications.