Thermal Validation
Thermal Validation
What is Thermal Validation?
Thermal processes applied to heat preserved foods are intended to destroy all organisms capable of growth during subsequent storage. Thermal validation is the process of obtaining scientific and technical evidence to ensure the thermal process applied is sufficient and correct, so that the selected controls are capable of controlling the target organisms.
Thermal validation is critical to the success of a HACCP plan, and the validation report is often a key document for your auditors, customers, and environmental health officers. There are high standards for thermal validation and is useful to have the validation completed by third party specialists who have practical experience and are unbiassed to the products, cookers, and processes. A third party validation company will bring a fresh pair of eyes and be better able to challenge the process. This is particularly true in heat process establishment stage for a new product or the commissioning stage of a new cooker.
01
Temperature or heat distribution
Temperature distribution testing is the measurement of temperature uniformity in cooker/retort systems to ensure that:
02
Cold point determination
Sometimes over looked as a step in validation of food heating processes but this is actually one of the most important steps because probe position errors can introduce huge errors into bacterial death calculations.
03
Heat penetration testing
The final stage of any heat process validation is to carry out sufficient repeat testing of the product to ensure that the characteristics of the product are understood and can be allowed for in design of a safe heat process.
04
Deflection testing
The use of flexible bowls, pots, trays and pouches for packaging heat processed foods has increased the need for tools and methods to monitor how those packs perform through the heat process, to ensure processes minimise distortion.
05
Enzyme testing (TTI)
Where conventional temperature probes cannot be applied, the enzyme technique TTI (Time and Temperature Integrators) may be used.