Microbial Food Safety Assurance and Risk Mitigation - Use of ICMSF Methodology

This webinar will explain International Commission on Microbiological Specifications for Foods (ICMSF) methodology and its statistical basis, assumptions, capabilities and limitations. It will also discuss risk mitigation strategies for detection and prevention of microbial contamination.

Why Should You Attend:

Food safety is of paramount importance to food commodity producers, formulated food manufacturers that use one or more of these commodities and end use customers or consumers in food service, C-stores, retail outlets or other points of purchase and consumption. Failure to comply with industry norms and regulatory expectations may result in product recall with substantial financial consequences. ICMSF has developed sampling plans suitable for contributing to this safety.

This webinar will explain application of this ICMSF methodology and its statistical basis, assumptions, capabilities and limitations. Opportunities for increasing productivity (reduce costs) or growth – rapid introduction of new products, will be explored. Key goals of this course are:

• To satisfy business needs for: risk mitigation, quality assurance, foster productivity and growth.
• To satisfy technical needs for: robust statistically valid methodology for quality assurance
• To add a “TRUMP CARD” in your hands for supply chain excellence: Tools and Resources Used to Maximize Productivity to achieve Confidence in technology, Advantages over competition with Robust technical and financial analysis to provide Delightful business decisions.

Learning Objectives:

• ICMSF methodology – Assumptions, capabilities and limitations, excel worksheet
• Statistical distributions – Bi-Nomial, Log-Normal, Poisson and their application in ICMSF
• Microbial contamination such as Salmonella, Listeria, Clostridium botulinum
• Lot acceptance and rejection
• Microbial criteria
• Risk mitigation and tolerance
• Food safety strategies for prevention and detection

Areas Covered in the Webinar:

• Microbiological contamination in food processing – brief overview
• Risk mitigation strategies:
  • Prevention – Procurement, processing, sanitation through distribution
  • Detection – Sampling and interpretation of results
  • Corresponding actionable alternatives
• ICMSF methodology
  • Conceptual overview
  • Basic definitions – Lot, sample, population, probability, cfu, Log- Normal, case, class, etc.
  • The math – statistics
    • Binomial distribution
    • Log Normal distribution
    • Poisson distribution
    • Their application in ICMSF sampling methodology
  • Assumptions and their implications
    • Risk tolerance – technical and business
    • Lot - Acceptance and rejection
  • So what? – Simple conversation
  • What if? Generate and interpret scenarios
  • Opportunities for Productivity and Growth – Connect the dots
    • Sample size, frequency – procurement, processing, sanitation, storage
    • Sampling cost function
    • Growth – QA built in at design and engineering
    • Use in new product or line extension R&D
    • Use in technology sourcing and validation
• FDA perspective
  • Is sampling enough?
  • Expectations from manufacturers and members in supply chain
• Hands on working session on ICMSF Excel worksheet
• Q and A

Who Will Benefit:

This webinar will provide valuable assistance to all personnel in:

• Procurement – Selection of vendors and approval of lots and payments
• Research and Development – formulation and process design, technology selection
• Quality assurance – setting standards, specification and compliance criteria
• Analytical – testing procedures – accuracy and precision used in use of ICMSF method
• Warehousing and distribution – post processing contamination risks and assessment

Instructor Profile:

Ashok Dhruv, is Principal at Ashok Dhruv, LLC a consulting practice serving Bio-Processing industries, (Food and Beverage, Bio technology and Bio fuels) focused on achieving material Productivity and Growth for his clients by solving complex technical challenges by application of “TRUMP CARD” – Tools and Resources Used to Maximize Productivity to achieve Confidence in technology, Advantages over competition with Robust technical and financial analysis to provide Delightful business decisions.

The tools are proprietary mathematical models for unit operations and unit processes in bio processing. These simulate heat, mass or momentum transfer with bio-chemical, enzymatic or microbial – death as well as growth - kinetics. These have been successfully applied in taking many technologies from “Concept to Commercialization”.