Gluten Intolerance for Food Manufacturing Companies Look to TraceGains Risk-Management

June 14, 2013 - PRLog -- Food Manufacturing Magazine featured article entitled, “Risk-Management Mechanisms Associated with Gluten Intolerance,” by Jonathan M. Cohen and Jenna A. Hudson.  According to Cohen and Hudson, “Approximately 1 percent of the United States population is unable to tolerate gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley, and rye.  For these individuals, gluten consumption may result in vomiting, bloating, anemia, osteoporosis, diabetes and even intestinal cancer. As more consumers discover that they have gluten intolerance or celiac disease, they have become more mindful of which foods are naturally gluten-free and which products are marketed as being gluten-free, and so many food manufacturers have increased their range of gluten-free products.”
Mechanisms for Despite a food manufacturer or supplier’s best efforts, however, there always is a risk that products manufactured to be gluten-free, or that consumers expect to be naturally gluten-free, may become tainted with gluten. For example, a recent study of naturally gluten-free foods found at least one brand of soy flour (which is frequently purchased in order to make gluten-free bread) contained nearly 3,000 parts per million of gluten.
Foods that are naturally gluten-free or are manufactured to be gluten-free may become tainted by gluten as the result of a supplier’s handling or processing of ingredients. Additionally, a tainted product may make it to consumers despite a company’s best efforts if pre-sale testing fails. If this happens, consumers may allege that a food company is liable for bodily injury or other harms from gluten, leading to potential economic liability and, perhaps, a recall.
To minimize the impact of such consequences, companies in the food industry must not only use traditional risk-spreading techniques like indemnification agreements, “additional insured” agreements and insurance policies; they must also be aware of and account for potential limitations in how these mechanisms will respond to gluten-related claims.
TraceGains (www.tracegains.com) is for quality, purchasing, product development, and other departments, that are burdened with manually managing suppliers and documents. TraceGains delivers full-service supplier, compliance, and regulatory document management solutions, including FSMA and GFSI. Unlike manual, ERP, or traditional document systems, TraceGains extracts data from documents and automatically takes action. TraceGains is proven to empower people to quickly solve problems, speed audits, and simplify continuous product improvement.
Supplier documentation storage, whether in file cabinets or in digital formats, may satisfy regulatory retention requirements, but does little to systematically unlock the wealth of business, compliance, and regulatory information they contain and you require on a daily basis to operate successfully.
By automatically analyzing and scorecarding supplier-provided documentation as it is received—such as certificates of analysis, qualification questionnaires, audit documents and their results, certifications (Kosher, Organic, etc.), insurance certificates, allergen questionnaires, and other import requirements (COOL, C-TPAT, FSMA, GFSI), among others—TraceGains helps food and nutraceutical manufacturers and ingredient processors automate document management, meet regulatory and industry compliance requirements, identify best and worst suppliers, source better with less risk, automatically raise product quality, and painlessly perform or participate in audits, all without needing to involve the IT department to help with complex technology.
TraceGains customers experience on average a 56% reduction in out-of-spec lot receipts, and a 20% reduction in attribute variability, resulting in enhanced continuous improvement, better performing ingredient and raw material inventory, improved cash flow, and long-term brand protection. Follow TraceGains on Twitter at @tracegains.

TraceGains, Inc.
www.tracegains.com
Marc Simony, Director of Marketing
pr@tracegains.com
720-465-9400