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This would also be a good time to get familiar with the regulatory and food safety issues relevant to your product by consulting a process authority. A process authority is a food safety expert who can perform a complete evaluation of how your product is made, including all the steps of ingredient sourcing, preparation, and packaging, to ensure that the final product is a consistent quality and will not harm the end consumer.9 A process review can provide you, as the business owner, great peace of mind, Additionally, certain products (shelf-stable low-acid and acidified foods) are required by law to be evaluated by a process authority.
A process authority is a food safety expert who can perform a complete evaluation of how your product is made, including all the steps of ingredient sourcing, preparation, and packaging, to ensure that the final product is a consistent quality and will not harm the end consumer. A process authority can issue a scheduled process.
The document that results from a process review is called a scheduled process. Among other things, a scheduled process specifies the pH and other critical factors — such as heat processing, container type, ingredients, and preservatives — that must be controlled to assure the manufacture of safe acidified foods. Scheduled processes must be followed during each and every production run of the food, and critical factors must be monitored by an individual who has successfully completed appropriate food safety training.
A complete list of Food Process Authorities by state can be found here.
It may take several attempts to achieve a scaled-up product comparable to the original that follows all of the required food safety regulations, and you will need to budget time and money for each recipe test and scheduled process validation. The cost of scheduled process validation at the Cornell Food Venture Center was $150 per product as of September 2021, and the turnaround time was 7-8 weeks. Turnaround time can be expedited for an additional fee.
You should review the scheduled process for each product periodically to determine if changes are necessary or have crept into your process due to consumer demand, ingredient problems, or changes in processing equipment. These changes must be filed as an amendment to an existing scheduled process. If the changes are significant, you may need a new scheduled process.