Quality Alchemist (品質煉金術師): Technical Seminar on Product Testing and Certification 2012

2012年3月25日星期日

Technical Seminar on Product Testing and Certification 2012

The Technical Seminar on Product Testing and Certification was held on 24 March 2012. The seminar was jointly organized by Department of System Engineering and Engineering Management of City University of Hong Kong (SEEM, CityUHK), Manufacturing and Industrial Engineering Section (MIES), The IET Hong Kong, and MILES Alumni Association of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Hong Kong Society for Quality (HKSQ) was one of supporting organizations.

The seminar aims to introduce the development of product testing and certification in Hong Kong to the participants; the theme of this seminar was focused on Food Management System and Testing. The summary was shown below.

In the beginning, Ir. Lam Man-Kwan (MILESSA representative) gave a welcoming speech. He expressed that Hong Kong could be the Centre of Testing and Certification.

Then Dr. K.S. Chin (Asso. Professor, SEEM of CityU) presented an opening remark. He briefed the important of Testing and Certification to enhance product quality and brand. Moreover, he introduced the recently bachelor course entitled "BEng Total Quality Engineering (BETQE)". The concept of BETQE was formed in 2007 and proposed to CityU in 2008. The course was started on 2009 that was before the establishment of Hong Kong Council for Testing and Certification (HKCTC).

After that IET and MILESAA presented souvenir to supporting organizations.

I represented HKSQ to receive the souvenir.

Group photo of all speakers and representatives of supporting organizations

The first speaker was Ms. Janice Chan (Independent Consultant and Lead Auditor) and her topic entitled "ISO 22000 Food Safety Management System".

Ms. Janice Chan briefed the key points of ISO 22000 included "Interactive Communication", "System Management", "Pre-requisite Programmes" and "HACCP Principles".

The following chart demonstrated the Interactive Communication in the whole supply chain.

Then Janice explained how to establish HACCP system.

At the end, Janice mentioned that Pre-requisite Programmes were involved good working instruction and infrastructure (e.g. GMP) to avoid cross-contamination. The most important was traceability system.

The second speaker was Dr. Leung Ka-Sing (Visiting Asso. Professor, ABCT Dept of PolyU) and his presentation named "Food Testing for Radioactive Contamination".

Dr. Leung explained the key radioactive contamination was come from nuclear accident. The common contaminated food after accident were milk, meat and others.

The Codex Guideline Levels for radionuclides contaminated food were showed as follows.

Dr. Leung said Gamma radiation should be measured first after the accident because of it high penetration power. There were two types of detector in which one was Scintillation Detector (e.g. Sodium iodide (NaI) detector) and the other was Semi-conductor Detector (e.g. High purity germanium (HPGe) detector). Detectors photo were showed below.

Sodium iodide (NaI) detector

High purity germanium (HPGe) detector

The following diagram showed Semi-conductor Detector was higher resolution that Scintillation Detector.

Then Dr. Leung briefed the calibration radionuclides (which should be long half-life).

For food sample measurement, it needed to take background counting and applied appropriate correction. Moreover, the food sample measurement should be the same conditions as calibration. After that it needed to calculate the activity concentration and unit expressed as Bq/kg or Bq/l.

Before break, Ir. Leung brief the membership of MILESAA and IET.

The last speaker was Mr. Jacky Lo (Senior Manager, Dept. of Food and Microbiology, Castco Testing Centre Ltd.) and his presentation topic was "Food Testing for 7+1 Nutrition Label of Hong Kong".

Mr. Jacky Lo said Food and Drugs (Composition and Labelling) Regulations (cap 132W) was in force and effective on 1 July 2010. Presence of a Nutrition Label with 7+1 information were: 1 (energy) + 7 (protein, carbohydrate, total fat, sat. fatty acids, trans fatty acids, Na and sugars). The following showed that there were 10 tests to be done for the nutrition label.

Then Mr. Jacky Lo explained the testing one by one. The following diagram showed the test for analysis of fatty acids (included saturated and trans fatty acids).