PROCESSING PROFILES are an efficient way to apply the VITAL^® Program and to use VITAL Online. Recipes may be able to be grouped into products that have the same possible exposure to potential cross contact allergens during manufacturing and therefore can use the same Processing Profile.

A Processing Profile should be created as a result of assessing the potential for cross contact due to manufacturing using the method described on p7 of the VITAL Guide.

The PROCESSING PROFILES function in VITAL Online is flexible. A Processing Profile can be summarised into a single cross contact (Figure 1 and a worked example shown below) or sub-divided to take into account the different products which could be potential cross contact (Figure 2) or different production stages (Figure 3). Whichever option is chosen, the ‘Assumptions’ should be used to clarify the source of the information.

Worked example to show a Summarised Processing Profile

This example demonstrates how to create a summarised Processing Profile on a Soup Line – the allergens present in the soups are shown in Table 1. In this example, the run order dictates that each of the recipes can be run directly after any of the others without cleaning. It is possible that a maximum of 2 kg of the previous recipe can hang up in the line and become homogeneously distributed into 500 kg of any of the following recipe. This information can be added to VITAL Online in the PROCESSING PROFILES Tab (Figure 1).

Figure 1 shows how this example could be entered into VITAL Online from the PROCESSING PROFILES Tab at the top of the VITAL Online screen (Note, only the entries for wheat and sesame are shown in this example).

Figure 1. Entering a Processing Profile

Figure 2. Soup Line Processing Profile divided by the recipes (Lobster Bisque and Egg Soup) that may become a cross contact due to manufacturing

Figure 3. Soup Line Processing Profile divided into cross contact due to the Mixer and the Filling Area