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Food Science & Technology vocabulary · Food Safety and HACCP

Foreign body

Meaning in food science & technology, with examples

nounCore term

In food science & technology, foreign body means: Any physical object in food that should not be there, such as glass, metal, hard plastic, wood, stones, insects or hair.

In Turkish: yabancı madde, yabancı cisim

How it is used

A leading cause of customer complaints. Factories prevent foreign bodies with sieves, magnets, metal detectors, X-ray machines, registers of glass and hard plastics, and knife and tool controls. Complaint reports say 'foreign body found in product'. It is also called 'foreign matter' or 'foreign object'.

Example sentences

  1. The customer found a foreign body in the yogurt; it looks like a piece of blue plastic.

  2. The X-ray machine rejects packs with foreign bodies such as bone, stone or glass.

Common collocations

  • foreign body complaint
  • foreign body detection
  • metal detector
  • glass and hard plastics register
  • foreign matter
  • contaminationThe presence or entry of something harmful or unwanted in food, such as microorganisms, chemicals, allergens or pieces of glass, metal or plastic.
  • hazard analysisThe first HACCP step, in which a team lists the biological, chemical, physical and allergen hazards at each process step and judges how likely and how severe each one is.
  • critical control pointA step in a process where a control can be applied and is essential to prevent, remove or reduce a food safety hazard to an acceptable level.
  • specificationA document that sets out the agreed requirements for a raw material, packaging or product, such as composition, chemical and microbiological limits, appearance and packing.

More terms: Food Safety and HACCP

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