AIB International’s catalog of Baking Process Kill Step Calculators now includes a profile for flour tortillas. These calculators, along with AIB’s kill step validation consulting services, are empowering bakeries to validate their food safety preventive controls and accurately evaluate Salmonella destruction in bakery products. The FDA’s Food Safety and Modernization Act (FSMA) requires validation and verification of thermal processes to ensure product safety.

“The food industry has long believed that all biological organisms like yeast or pathogens are killed in the oven, and critical product quality attributes are achieved,” says Lakshmikantha Channaiah, director of microbiology at AIB International. “Under FSMA, the FDA is requiring proof of that theory; however, prior to AIB’s latest contribution, there was not publically available research to use as foundational scientific validation.”

This is the eighth calculator developed by AIB International with other calculators available for yeast-raised doughnuts, nut muffins, cake muffins, whole wheat multigrain bread, crisp cookies, soft cookies, and hamburger buns. All calculators and published research information are available for free download on AIB’s website.

Commercial bakers can use these calculators to evaluate the lethality of a thermal process (baking) to destroy Salmonella in their products and demonstrate the effectiveness of the process to comply with FSMA’s preventive controls rule. The interactive calculators work by using oven time and temperature parameters to automatically determine the total process lethality (e.g., 5 log) for Salmonella. If the desired log reduction is achieved for the baking process and pathogen of concern, the generated report can be used as guidance and supporting documentation for FSMA’s validation and verification process.

“We are committed to the baking industry and this is a demonstrated need as part of FSMA regulations,” said Brian Strouts, vice president of baking and food technical services, for AIB International. “We are glad that businesses can turn to us for help validating their kill steps.”

AIB International collaborated with the American Bakers Association and its Food Technical and Regulatory Affairs Committee, and with researchers at Kansas State University and the University of Georgia to produce the Baking Process Kill Step Calculators. “This latest development in expanding the kill step calculator’s use now serves the baking industry more broadly,” said ABA president & CEO Robb MacKie. “We are pleased that our partnership with AIB contributes to saving significant industry-wide resources and improving the safety of products.” Since the development of the Baking Process Kill Step Calculators more than 2,400 industry professionals have downloaded various versions of the calculators.