Development and Application of a Method for Quality Assesment of Perishable Food Suppliers From a Food Service

Abstract

To assist and ensure the quality and safety of food intended for human consumption, Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) or Good Preparation Practices (GPP) have been established, a set of standards that should be used for products, processes, services and preparation. In Brazil, GMPs are legally governed by certain ordinances and resolutions, foremost among these are Ordinance No 1.428/1993, Ordinance No 326/1997, Resolution RDC No 275/2002 and Resolution RDC No 216/2004 (9-12). The assessment of GMP in food production and commercialization establishments, through appropriate use of questionnaires, is cited to support qualification and selection of suppliers based on a fiscal sanitary inspection by the establishment in order to comply with these criteria, or as the basis for the deployment of the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points system (HACCP) (5). Thus, the relationship between purchasers and suppliers allows that efforts are combined to create ABSTRACT Studies evaluating the quality of food providers and the guidelines for their better qualification are scarce in literature. A structured checklist was applied in the supplier establishments to evaluate: infrastructure, sanitaryhygiene control of foods and handlers, and conditions of transportation and receiving. The Supplier Quality Index was used to calculate the scores of vendors, and the score was assigned according to the fulfillment of the items presented on the checklist: "compliant", ≥75.0% compliance and "non compliant", <75.0%. The items "control of food hygiene and sanitary" and "infrastructure" showed the highest rate of compliance (85.15%, each), while the "sanitary-hygiene control of handlers" was that of most frequent non-compliance (80.0%). The proposed methodology was efficient and may serve as a model to be employed for evaluation of supplier performance.

Non-Destructive Evaluation of the Physiochemical Properties of Milk Drink Flavored with Date Syrup Utilizing VIS-NIR Spectroscopy and ANN Analysis

“…The combination of NIR and statistical analysis is a powerful method for revealing food properties and sensory evaluations. Creating a quality index model for food characteristics and then using NIR to express this quality index can simplify and accelerate food quality assessments during production and shelf-life stages [33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44].…”