Everything you need to know about Food Grading

What is Food Grading?

Food grading is the process of assessing and inspecting various foods. Food can be graded
both by hand and by machinery.

How is it graded?

The inspections and assessments involve sorting the food regarding:
● Quality
● Freshness
● Legal conformity
● Market value
Different types of food can be graded to different standards. Food such as dairy products and raw meat like beef involve observing certain criteria.

Dairy Food Grading

Dairy grading can be done using the five senses, mainly taste and smell. However, technical testing also has to be completed. This comprises of:
● Receiving a sample of the product – making sure that it is in sterile packaging.
● A grader who will follow the latest “Standard Methods for the Examination of Dairy Products’
● The dairy product will then undergo a variety of tests.

Beef Food Grading

Grading Beef involves observing the criteria of The Beef Carcase Classification scheme: classify carcases.
This comprises of:
● Dressing the carcase
● Catagorising the carcase
● Classifying the carcase – According to conformation (flesh coverage and overall shape), fat coverage and weight.
● Stamping or labeling the carcase
● Communicate the classification results

Grading by hand

Food grading such as the inspection of fruits after washing can be done by hand. The effectiveness of hand grading depends on a number of things:
● The quality of the product
● The quantity of product per inspector
● The Inspectors experience and physical condition
● The kind of inspection that is taking place– larger quantities of product such as grain, is graded on smaller random samples.
● The speed that the products pass the inspector – This is specific to the type of product

Grading by machinery

Food grading by machinery can generally be more efficient, especially for companies, whichhave a larger quantity of products.
The quality and freshness of a product can be graded by using, colour measurement, use of x rays, lasers and infrared rays as well as microwaves.
Machinery can also be used when sorting food. Sorting machinery can sort food based on their:
● Shape
● Size
● Density
● Surface properties

Where can you get your products graded?

Edwards Transport are a chilled storage and distribution system. They also have their own food grading and sampling facility. The facility is specialised towards grading dairy products, such as milk and cheese. However, it is an adaptable facility that can be used for a number of food products.

To find out more about the types of food grading that Edwards Transport provide, visit their website here

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