Former Food Products Safety Evaluation: Computer Vision as an Innovative Approach for the Packaging Remnants Detection

Abstract

Former food products (FFPs) represent a way by which leftovers from the food industry (e.g., biscuits, bread, breakfast cereals, chocolate bars, pasta, savoury snacks, and sweets) are converted into ingredients for the feed industry, thereby keeping food losses in the food chain. FFPs represent an alternative source of nutrients for animal feeding. However, beyond their nutritional value, the use of FFPs in animal feeding implies also safety issues, such as those related to the presence of packaging remnants. These contaminants might reside in FFP during food processing (e.g., collection, unpacking, mixing, grinding, and drying). Nowadays, artificial senses are widely used for the detection of foreign material in food and all of them involve computer vision. Computer vision technique provides detailed pixel-based characterizations of colours spectrum of food products, suitable for quality evaluation. The application of computer vision for a rapid qualitative screening of FFP's safety features, in particular for the detection of packaging remnants, has been recently tested. This paper presents the basic principles, the advantages, and disadvantages of the computer vision method with an evaluation of its potential in the detection of packaging remnants in FFP.

Potentials and Challenges of Former Food Products (Food Leftover) as Alternative Feed Ingredients

“…These processes include collection, unpacking, mixing, grinding and drying, that impact both quality and safety. In terms of safety, both microbiological load and packaging remnants are the main issues for the current regulations on feed standards [6,[20][21][22][23].…”

“…In terms of packaging remnants, a useful example is represented by bakery co-by-products such as bread, biscuits, waffles, and breakfast cereals whose packaging must ensure the maintenance of quality during transport and storage. Food packaging vary widely based on the materials used and on how the food has been processed [6,20,[22][23][24].…”

Review: Insects and former foodstuffs for upgrading food waste biomasses/streams to feed ingredients for farm animals

“…Classical remnant residues in FFPs are plastics, paper and aluminium foil. The typical un-packaging process of FFPs can be summarized as follows: (1) the packaging is broken and reduced in size, (2) the now accessible FFPs are processed to produce a ready product and (3) the remains of packaging materials are finally removed by several procedures such as sieving, magnetic attraction, eddy current separation or density methods (van Raamsdonk et al, 2011;Amato et al, 2017;Tretola et al, 2017b). Despite these processes, some packaging remnants such as plastic, resin, aluminium and pressed paperboard can remain as residue in the final product.…”

“…Another biomass with great potential is represented by former foodstuff products (FFPs). These are foodstuffs that have become unsuitable for human consumption for various reasons, such as production errors leading to broken or intermediate foodstuffs or surpluses caused by the logistical challenge of daily deliveries, surpluses caused by the discontinuation of a food product line, products over the perishable date, all of which are potential former food products (Pinotti et al, 2013;Giromini et al, 2017;Tretola et al, 2017a;Tretola et al, 2017b). In addition, the European Commission recently published its guidelines on the use of food no longer intended for human consumption in animal feed (European Commission, 2018), as the next key deliverable of the EU Circular Economy Action Plan on food waste.…”

Radio Frequency Heating of Milk–Effects on Quality, Safety, and Shelf Life Assessed Using Artificial Senses and Chemometric Tools

“…To perform the analysis, a computer vision system, Iris Visual Analyzer 400 (Alpha M.O.S., Toulouse, France), was used. Milk samples were positioned into the measurement chamber, which guarantees controlled light conditions, and the images were acquired with a black background [38,39]. Digital cameras are able to register the color of any pixel from the image using three-color sensors per pixel, which captures the intensity of the light in the red (R), green (G) or blue (B) spectrum [40].…”