Yes, IoT should be monitoring your Peanut Butter Sandwiches

By Garrett Milne & Karim Zuhri, Product Marketing at SafetyCulture

Is the rise of affordable sensors and IoT technology in the market a new way to improve food safety and quality conditions in many of our favorite brands?

The food you eat out of a jar every day may be contaminated. Now, don't panic just yet, there are plenty of fail-safes in place, but things go wrong more often than you'd think. Take the case of Peanut Company of America (PCA), the former supplier of almost 3% of all peanut products in the US.

Starting in late 2008, salmonella contamination caused the death of nine people and sickness of at least 714 people. The majority of those who fell ill were children, after eating products containing contaminated peanuts. These peanuts and peanut products were all sourced from one company: Peanut Company of America (PCA). In the end, PCA closed its operations and filed for bankruptcy. Its CEO faces criminal proceedings, and the peanut industry faces a billion dollar loss.

On this surface, this recall may seem like only a food safety problem, but it’s more - this highlights how food waste and regulatory compliance in the food industry can be extremely costly.

The butterfly effect of food safety?

Food safety incidents cost manufactures and food-service businesses millions of dollars when they have to recall products. It is estimated that the average food recall costs a food manufacturing business at least $10 million. These financial costs are staggering, but this issue can be detrimental to the brand and reputation of a company in the long-term as well. PCA went bankrupt because of its lack of concern regarding food safety, but the peanut industry as a whole saw a reduction in consumption overall. The effects rippled through communities: Farmers couldn’t sell crops, and local businesses closed because of the recall. Food safety isn’t just a concern for individual businesses - its ramifications are industry-wide. Having a monitoring system that ensures food is stored in temperatures that don’t encourage the growth of bacteria can stop a food safety incident before it arises.

An increasingly complex regulatory compliance scheme?

In the case of PCA, a judge found the company negligent in its compliance because the company’s facilities were so poorly maintained and documentation was non-existent. This kind of non-compliance can result in fines, a stop in operations, and again a loss in brand reputation. Yet, the issue continues as food compliance becomes increasingly more expensive with regulatory bodies and brand standards demanding more extensive standards. As businesses seek to cut costs and improve efficiency, digitizing and automating data collection can avert these issues, saving businesses substantially.

Beyond the recall, a global food waste problem?

While food safety incidents can be rare for individual companies, food waste is an issue facing the entirety of the food industry on an international scale. Any recall is a waste of food and all the resources that went into producing it. In food production, it’s paramount to improve the technology around product storage. Tracking and alerts on storage and refrigeration can ensure stock loss protection and save businesses thousands of dollars in spoiled stock. In 2017, Research shows that for every $1 invested in methods to produce less food in production, $14 or more can be saved for businesses.

Will IoT solve our food woes?

Technology and IoT are more buzzwords than anything else and are never a silver bullet for the issues as rampant and severe as those highlighted by PCA. But, from talking to hundreds of customers in multiple industries, they all express a need for affordable, continuous temperature monitoring. Stating that in the food industry, what keeps them up at night is the constant chase to comply with complex food safety regulations and compliance paper trails. Not to mention the desire for a reduction in food waste to improve operations costs.

Earlier this year, we launched a self-serve sensors product that our customers can use to monitor temperature and humidity in real-time. They can now proactively prevent the big “scares” of recalls and the small “scares” of stock loss. Sofia Dias, the FSQA manager at Marley Spoon, said sensors in her workplace were a “no brainer,” also stating that, "The business case is easy to build because the risk is there and the risk is high when you have a significant amount of inventory in your facility to protect.” We're always striving to bring our customers peace of mind in their workplaces - sensors are a continuation of this goal.

If you want to know more about our sensors, check out this page

By Garrett Milne & karim Zuhri, Product Marketing at SafetyCulture