Food Product Support

Managing food and beverage product specifications, ingredients and quality control.

It’s no secret that the food and beverage industry in the UK is experiencing staff shortages. Skills shortages continue to impact different roles and levels, from engineers and managers to factory operatives.¹ If your business is one of them, you’re not alone.

Maintaining food quality control and safety is critical for businesses involved in the manufacturing and handling of food. It’s not something you can choose to do, or not do – when the pressure’s on and staff shortages are hitting hard, food sampling and environmental swabbing still has to be done.

Even if you’re lucky enough to have a full quota of workers, you may not have the capacity, resources or facilities to manage these essential tasks in-house.

Food product sampling is essential in ensuring compliance with food product specifications and regulations; it provides that all-important quality assurance in the food industry. It’s how we make sure food is safe for consumption and also prevent problems from arising in the first place.

Food product sampling usually involves taking a portion of the food – for example, a small quantity from a production batch, or a portion of food on sale in a store – for testing and analysis.

The sample food product may be put through a range of tests to assess:

• Nutritional value
• Shelf life
• Contaminants
• Allergens
• Ingredient authenticity
• Compliance with legal and industry standards
• Consistency – particularly when produced at multiple manufacturing facilities.

Failure to complete quality controls and food product safety checks can lead to food that is poor in quality or unsafe. If allowed to reach the market, unchecked food not only puts public health and safety at risk, but it could put your reputation on the line, too.

While large manufacturers may have on-site testing facilities, the vast majority of food and beverage businesses do not. Even large manufacturers with multiple sites can find food sampling and testing challenging as they’re unlikely to have testing facilities at every manufacturing location.

That’s where outsourcing your food safety and quality management to NSF can help. Our qualified experts can help you to:

• Manage your sampling program
• Adhere to standards of food safety and quality
• Achieve regulatory and food compliance
• Maintain the quality of your products and customer satisfaction
• Protect consumer and public health
• Safeguard your brand reputation.

Maintaining comprehensive records of food product specifications is essential in ensuring consistency in product quality, meeting compliance and regulatory requirements, and protecting consumers and the wider public from potential health risks.

The type of information to be recorded and maintained will typically be:

• Supplier database
• Laboratory analysis results
• Key product information, for example:
  • Product name
  • Brand name
  • Product status i.e. active or discontinued
  • Manufacturer/supplier codes
  • Regulatory region
  • Composition
  • Food declarations
  • Food claims
  • Allergens
  • Nutritional information
  • Shelf-life and storage requirements.

Every business is different. That’s why here at NSF our food product support services will be tailored to the exact need of your business. Treat us as an extension of your team; we’ll manage your products with expert technical and administrative resources, helping to lighten your load. Or you can call on us on an ad hoc basis for one-off projects.

• Food and beverage sampling and analysis. We can select, collect and test samples on your behalf – including water samples – or we can simply carry out the testing part.
• Environmental swabbing and testing. Ensuring facilities are sanitary is a key part of maintaining food safety. From conveyor belts and cutting boards to knife and refrigerator handles, we can swab and test surfaces for hazards such as E. coli, listeria or salmonella. Whether you’re handling egg, chicken, cold cuts or any other food or beverage product, our experts will know exactly which tests to perform.
• Food quality control and investigations. Testing the shelf-life of food at various intervals is an important aspect of food quality control. We can test the quality of a product – checking texture, taste and colour – and we can also test its safety, checking for micro-organisms that could pose a threat to health. Should a product fall short of standards set, we’ll help you get to the bottom of the issue.
• Customer service surveys. Find out what your customers really think. We can conduct surveys on your behalf, from telephone surveys to instore questionnaires. Using our food knowledge and experience, we know just the questions to ask, before analysing the responses and sharing with you the valuable insights learnt from your customers.
• Food product support management. We offer a full suite of food product support management. In addition to product selection, sampling and testing, we also provide regulatory and food labelling compliance support.

We provide essential connectivity between your customers, suppliers, enforcement authorities, and operational teams, offering end-to-end support in food compliance, sampling, and highly valued technical expertise. From outsourced staffing to supplier management and product testing, our global network ensures flexibility, efficiency, and seamless integration—so you can focus on strategic priorities with confidence.

In addition, as a valued client of ours, you will have access to the full portfolio of NSF’s solution offering developed over the last 80 years as a leader in the industry, including training, auditing, and certification.*

Source

¹ State of Industry Report, Food and Drink Federation

*Use of NSF consulting services or attending NSF training sessions does not provide an advantage, nor is it linked in any way to the granting of certification.