Food Safety Testing for Frozen & Refrigerated Foods
Freezing and refrigerating foods increases their shelf life, but precautions must be taken to ensure foods that are cooked from frozen or after being thawed are suitable to eat and meet sensory requirements. Numerous hazards can affect food safety, taste, smell, and texture, both prior to food processing and after thawing or cooking. Understanding risks and mitigation strategies can help protect your consumers and make your products more enjoyable.
FSNS offers a broad portfolio of assays conducted in state-of-the-art laboratories to help ensure that the quality of your frozen and refrigerated foods meets your highest standards. We provide accurate results with industry leading turnaround times to help you meet your food safety goals.
Why Test Frozen & Refrigerated Foods?
Once frozen food is thawed, it suffers the same safety risks as refrigerated and fresh foods. In addition, taste and texture may become compromised.
Laboratory testing is an important component of product development and ongoing operations for the frozen and refrigerated foods industry. Whether it is testing raw ingredients, providing nutritional information, analyzing environmental monitoring program samples, or validating cooking instructions, FSNS uses an array of validated testing methods and expert scientific knowledge to ensure your product formulations meet compliance requirements while still remaining delicious.
Frozen Food Safety Testing
Frozen foods must undergo the same rigorous food safety testing as fresh foods because their hazards are similar once they are thawed. Though freezing can inhibit the growth of many microbial pathogens and spoilage organisms, it does not provide full lethality. Thus, thawing can reactivate microbial growth, allowing microorganisms to grow to levels that have the potential to make consumers ill or to spoil products.
Refrigerated Food Safety Testing
Cooling can prolong the shelf-life of foods, but it is not without risks. Understanding which food ingredients can be preserved in cool environments and for how long can help protect your consumers from dangerous pathogens.
Shelf-Life Testing
The quality and sensory appeal of frozen and refrigerated foods can deteriorate over time. FSNS Lab+, the contract research division of Certified Group, designs and conducts shelf-life tests that can provide the data needed to help you establish “best by” dates for your products. This helps you ensure that consumers receive the highest quality products, while also helping prevent unnecessary waste, saving money.
Challenge Studies and Other Validations
While refrigeration and freezing can slow the growth of microorganisms, certain pathogens like Listeria monocytogenes, can still grow during cold storage and reach levels that have the potential to make consumers ill. FSNS Lab+ can perform challenge studies with Listeria monocytogenes and other microorganisms to help you establish “use by” dates for your products where they will no longer be able to inhibit growth of these critical pathogens.
In addition, FSNS Lab+ can perform cooking instruction validations and complete validation studies for thermal and non-thermal processes in order to support your food safety programs.
Organoleptic Analysis of Taste, Texture, and Odor
While the safety of frozen and refrigerated foods is of utmost importance, the quality and sensory appeal of products are also critical. Consumers will only purchase products that are appealing to them. FSNS organoleptic testing assesses product taste, texture, and odor to ensure your frozen foods will retain the highest level of quality.
Nutritional Assessments
FDA requires food packaging to reflect the nutritional information of the products inside. FSNS provides complete nutritional analysis for vitamins, minerals, fat, protein, carbohydrates, and more to ensure your labeling is complete and accurate.