Each year, food manufacturers must stop production lines and quarantine billions of dollars' worth of product due to potential foreign body contamination. This happens either when foreign contaminates enter the food manufacturing process and are not properly detected, or when they enter the process downstream from the inspection. In the past, a company with this challenge has faced tough options: absorbing the cost of discarding the quarantined product, shipping it to an off-site third party location for re-inspection, or risk releasing potentially contaminated product to consumers.

Today, there is a fourth and more cost-effective choice: on-site re-inspection. METTLER TOLEDO’s new X-ray Re-Inspection Program enables companies to re-inspect the quarantined product on-site using a METTLER TOLEDO X-ray system, identifying and removing any contaminated product, then allowing uncontaminated re-inspected product to be delivered to customers. This re-inspection takes place at the manufacturer’s facility without shutting down ongoing production, continuing to maximize productivity.

Under this new Re-Inspection Program, after METTLER TOLEDO consults with the manufacturer to determine what contaminant it has detected, it configures an X-ray system to maximize detection for that contaminant. Quick turnaround enables quarantined product to be re-inspected quickly, and confirmed uncontaminated products to move on quickly to customers.

A dedicated, factory-trained METTLER TOLEDO service engineer will guide the manufacturer’s operators through the re-inspection, providing training and technical support throughout the re-inspection process. When the re-inspection is complete, the manufacturer will receive a full report documenting inspection results to support the company’s quality program for future audits

For more information about the X-ray Re-inspection Program, interested companies can contact METTLER TOLEDO at PI.Reinspection@mt.com.