Gail Albertson, North Carolina transportation manager at Mountaire Farms, shared experiences on installing electronic logging systems and video cameras in trucks. Albertson explained that the cameras are not expensive and allows a company to see how well their drivers are performing. He suggested having someone on staff to monitor the truck videos.

“Our monitor was able see an accident one of our trucks was involved in shortly after it happened. The video allowed us to respond quickly. We were able to send the video from the truck to the state trooper’s vehicle while they were still on the scene of the accident. From the footage, our driver was able to be cleared of responsibility on the scene, saving us time and money in legal fees,” remarked Albertson.

During his presentation on “Oxidation and Its Challenges,” Dr B J Bench, director of food safety and quality assurance for Tyson Foods, imparted first-hand experience in dealing with oxidation of rendered products. Bench pointed out that we live in a world where oxidants are not perfect, and there is no way to stop all potential reactions.

“When trying to understand oxidation you look at seasonality, time, temperature, moisture and storage. Oxidation is somewhat of an arbitrary term. It is essentially a degradation process for handling rendered products. You see all kinds of chemistry phenomenon taking place that are different reactions, and it can be difficult to define in the matrixes that we deal with,” Bench explained.

Dr Ansen Pond, director of quality assurance at Pilgrim’s, discussed what renderers can expect from a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Food Safety Modernization Act inspection. He conveyed that while inspections are conducted by FDA officials, they will be contracted through state regulators. When inspections are contracted out, companies may run into some challenges since the contracted inspectors may interpret laws a bit differently than the FDA.