Brought to you by the AIB International

Fruit-filled pastries are one of the most popular bakery products in North America and Europe.  This sector is slowly but surely expanding, with new innovations and flavors giving them a fresh appeal.

However, if you’re producing fruit pastries you need to be documenting the kill step to be in compliance with FSMA. To help manufacturers ensure food safety and compliance with the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) validation requirement, AIB International has developed a fruit-filled pastry Kill Step Validation (KSV) calculator.

This is the tenth baking process kill step calculator developed by AIB International in collaboration with the American Bakers Association, Kansas State University, and the University of Georgia. This science-based validation tool’s main objective is to help commercial bakers demonstrate the effectiveness of an oven to destroy Salmonella spp. during fruit-filled pastry manufacturing.

Why do you need kills step validation?

FSMA is an important step in ensuring that the U.S. food supply is safe by shifting the main focus more on preventing food safety failures during manufacturing. Specifically, the FSMA validation rule states that human food manufacturing facilities subject to the preventive control requirements in 21 CFR §117.160 must validate that the preventive controls implemented are adequate to control the potential hazard as appropriate to the nature of the preventive control and its role in the facility’s food safety system.

By tracking and documenting kill step validation, food producers reap benefits such as:

• Increased food safety assurance
• Compliance with the Food Safety Modernization Act’s regulation for hazard analysis and preventive controls
• Avoid conducting foundational research, costing upwards of $50k per product

How do you use it?

The fruit-filled pastry KSV calculator, generated from Salmonella-inoculated laboratory studies, utilizes time and product internal temperature readings to calculate a predicted total process lethality (e.g., 5-log reduction) for Salmonella.

Here’s a step-by-step guide:

1. Get access to Microsoft Excel and a data logger.
2. Download the fruit-filled pastry KSV calculator.
3. Format the Data Logging Device and place in the pastry pans.
4. Run the product through the baking cycle.
5. Compile the data and adjust!

You can find the full list of instructions here.