At the crossroads of skills and know-how, the formulation of agri-food products must meet a number of requirements in terms of legal, marketing and labelling compliance. Find out what are the good practices of agri-food formulation and what are the stakes of a successful product development.
Food formulation: major challenges for the company
To meet the expectations of consumers while respecting the INCO & FSMA regulations, a food company must take care of its product formulations. To do so, it must not only deal with the permanent renewal of ingredients, but also with the latest consumer trends and new rules in terms of labelling. Indeed, as the INCO regulation tends to refine its willingness to satisfy and inform consumers ever better, new obligations and restrictions are added over time and scientific research. All the stake of the food-processing formulation thus consists in finding the perfect balance between law and marketing, by answering the many regulatory constraints and by appeasing the need for transparency of the consumer.
Food formulation at the crossroads of a company’s services
The many constraints related to the formulation of agri-food products force the different departments of companies to coordinate efficiently. While the Research and Development department deals with the first formulation according to the different ingredients used in the composition of a food, it is then up to the Quality department and the Regulatory Affairs department to validate or not the result obtained according to the legal constraints and the conformity of the labelling. Once the formulation has been definitively validated, it must then pass into the hands of the marketing department, which is responsible for checking that it meets the current needs and expectations of consumers, particularly the “Without”. All these validations or invalidations inevitably lead to tedious back and forth between the different departments, which can not only slow down production, but also cause errors.
Practices to be respected in food formulation
The constraints of the formulator of food products are numerous. To be in accordance with the FSMA regulation, with the legal department and with the marketing department, a product formulation has to be faithful, versatile and transparent at the same time. For its list of ingredients to be validated, the formulator of food products must make sure to respect :
- The INCO regulation and other legal information to be included – or not – on the label.
- The legal aspects by controlling in particular the list of allergens and the products “without”.
- The marketing aspect by highlighting the healthy, local components and emphasizing “free” of gluten, lactose, etc..
- The composition of the product according to the country for which it is intended.
- Specialized software for NPD
In order to better comply with regulatory issues, limit round trips between different departments and better manage the adaptation of product composition according to the constraints of each country, there is fortunately a reliable and effective tool: the food formulation software offered by many publishers such as LASCOM or Proginov.
These software allow to :
- Guarantee the accuracy of data thanks to the centralization and dematerialization of information and thanks to the automation of data entry.
- Formulate while respecting the briefs thanks to a real-time alert system in case of non respect of the various constraints (product “without”, list of allergens, etc.).
- Anticipate production and formulation changes according to the different countries.
The advantages of the automation of agri-food formulations are numerous. In addition to reducing lead times, it also reduces development costs and lowers the error rate for better compliance with the brief and constraints. Result: internal and external round trips are limited and collaborations are greatly facilitated!
