I Love Regulation
More Regulated than Alcohol
I love learning about and understanding food regulatory policy. And I am absolutely in the right industry for that passion, since hot sauce production is more regulated than the production of alcohol! I also love it when inspectors show up, because I always have more questions for them than they do for me!
In 1979 the canned food industry asked the FDA to regulate the production of low acid and acidified foods (i.e. soups, pickles, canned corn, hot sauce, etc). The industry asked the FDA to step in because when you can food incorrectly you can kill people (in our industry we call it "bathtub sauce"). There were some high profile cases of C. botulinum in canned goods (which is a really, really bad bacteria) and the public was justifiably getting scared of the whole industry. The rules were created to help restore trust.
The resulting regulation made sure that every food canner not only has lots of I's to dot and T's to cross, but we also have to take a class to help ensure that we know "why" these rules are so important. The Better Process Control School is one reason that you often see legitimate sauce makers get really angry at sauce makers who aren't following the rules. We know how bad the result can be.
Every single recipe we make has to be reviewed by a Scheduled Process Authority and submitted to the FDA. We have critical control points of temperature and pH. If those aren't met, we don't sell the batch (or we have to recall it and that's no bueno). And we have to record EVERYTHING. According to the FDA, if it's not recorded, it didn't happen. The picture above is our pH lineup from a few days of production. We save partial bottles from every batch for a few days after production for the 2 pH tests that we have to take from every batch.
Fortunately, this oversight has created a safe and booming industry. It also gave our industry a leg up when the Food Safety Modernization Act was passed in 2018. We already knew what we had to do and how to do it to ensure that we were making safe food. It's hard work, but I'm happy to be the one doing it!
