Vitagen Report - Team

Department of Biology

Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris

Food Science And Nutrition

(SBK 3023)

-Report of Study Trip To Vitagen-

Group B (1)

Group Members :

1. Mohd Aidil Ubaidillah B Razilan (D20091035132)

2. Suardi Bin Nanang (D20091035131)

3. Muhamad Fadlilah Bin Mukhlas (D20091035126)

4. Ku Mohd Syafiq Bin Ku Yusoff (D20091035089)

Lecturer Name : Dr Hasimah Binti Alimon

Dr Shakinaz Desa

VITAGEN - Malaysia's 1st Cultured Milk

1.0 INTRODUCTION

VITAGEN is a cultured milk drink made by fermenting skim milk with billions of live probiotic cultures (good bacteria i.e. Lactobacillus acidophilus and Lactobacillus casei) to help maintain a healthy digestive system. These probiotic cultures are specially imported from Chr. Hansen Laboratory in Denmark, a world leading cultures laboratory supplying high quality probiotics worldwide.

Probiotic cultures in VITAGEN can withstand bile and acidic stomach juices and reach the intestines alive to inhibit the growth of harmful bacteria in the intestines. With the presence of these probiotic cultures, the environment in the colonic flora becomes unsuitable for harmful bacteria to grow. They also remove toxins and waste from our body. The longer waste matter remains in the lower intestines, the higher the chances of intestinal distress and possible cancer when carcinogens attack normal cells.

In a nutshell, probiotic cultures in VITAGEN combined with the good bacteria in our body help the body defend it against toxins, harmful bacteria and allergens. Thus, VITAGEN contributes positively to our health because it promotes good colon health and improves our immune system. It increases resistance to harmful bacteria and takes care of good digestion. The live of lactobacillus cultures are from Chr. Hansen's Lab, Denmark. Chr. Hansen's Lab is known as world leading biotechnology company which has been supplying high quality bacterial cultures to the dairy cultures to the dairy industry worldwide for over 100 years. Lactobacillus acidophilus and Lactobacillus casei are probiotics to help replenish the good bacteria in digestive system by:

Helps to stabilize the intestinal flora - a balance of good bacteria and harmful bacteria. If the imbalance persists, high levels of harmful bacteria could leave us more vulnerable to infection and bowel cancer

Helps with digestion and absorption of vital nutrients from the food we eat.

Helps to reduce the risk of intestinal distubances such as constipation, diarrhoea, ulcers, bloating, belching, bad breathe, heartburn or even nausea.

Helps to boost body resistance by surpressing the growth of harmful bacteria which might be capable of producing carcinogens

Helps to replenish a healthy colon of good intestinal bacteria in the body, especially after taking antibiotics when both good and harmful bacteria may be killed.

Helps to improve bowel movement.

Helps to improve tolerance to milk and reduce milk allergy

2.0 RECOGNITION

a) ISO 22000 (International Standard Organization) Certified 9001-2008

Vitagen is produced right here in Singapore by Malaysia Dairy Industries Pte Ltd. In 1994, we were awarded the ISO 9002 Certification for Quality Management System. In 2003, it was upgraded to ISO 9001:2000 certification, and renew to ISO 9001:2008 in 2010. With the ISO certification, the company improved its internal processes, ensuring consistent product quality and faster response to customers' requirements.

b) HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) Certification

In 2001, seeing the need to assure consumers of safe & wholesome food, Malaysia Dairy Industries Pte Ltd embarked on a food safety program and subsequently achieved Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) certification. This program focuses on food safety from the procurement and handling, manufacturing and distribution of the final goods.

c) HALAL Certified

To ensure that all Muslims can enjoy Vitagen, we have not only selected ingredients suitable for Muslims but also obtained Halal certification from Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura (MUIS). MUIS is the highest Islamic authority in Singapore & the only authorised body to issue halal certificates.

3.0 HAZARD ANALYSIS AND CRITICAL CONTROL POINTS (HACCP)

Hazard analysis and critical control points, or HACCP is a systematic preventive approach to food safety and pharmaceutical safety that addresses physical, chemical, and biological hazards as a means of prevention rather than finished product inspection. HACCP is used in the food industry to identify potential food safety hazards, so that key actions can be taken to reduce or eliminate the risk of the hazards being realized. The system is used at all stages of food production and preparation processes including packaging, distribution, etc. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) say that their mandatory HACCP programs for juice and meat are an effective approach to food safety and protecting public health. Meat HACCP systems are regulated by the USDA, while seafood and juice are regulated by the FDA. The use of HACCP is currently voluntary in other food industries

3.1 The Seven HACCP Principles

Principle #1 Hazard Analysis

Look at each step (e.g. purchasing, delivery, storage, preparation, cooking, chilling etc.) in your operation and identify what can go wrong e.g. Salmonella in a cooked chicken product due to cross contamination with raw meat (biological hazard), contamination of uncovered food with detergent(chemical hazard) or a piece of broken glass fallen into an uncovered food (physical hazard).

Vitagen is supplied almost all over the country, so it is very essential to remain the quality of the Vitagen. By providing a lorry storage with the temperature of 0˚C, the quality of the Vitagen could be remained.

As the product supplied, the factory will ensure that the customer did not take the expired product of Vitagen by taking them back to the factory to be destroyed after three days before the product expired. This could avoid the consumers from getting sick of diarhea and etc.

The Vitagen needed to be storage under 4˚C so that it can stand for at least six weeks. Vitagen can be left in room temperature not more than three hours due to inhibit the reactivity of bacteria, so it is safe to keep the Vitagen in refrigerator.

This product is safe to be consumed by pregnant woman, children, asthma patient and so on. Briefly, everyone regardless of age can enjoy the benfits of drinking Vitagen. It is healthy drink for the whole family.

Principle #2 Identify Critical Control Points

A critical control point (CCP) is a point, step or procedure at which control can be applied and a food safety hazard can be prevented, eliminated or reduced to acceptable levels. The HACCP team will use a CCP decision tree to help identify the critical control points in the process. A critical control point may control more that one food safety hazard or in some cases more than one CCP is needed to control a single hazard. The number of CCP's needed depends on the processing steps and the control needed to assure food safety. It also to Identify the points in your operation that ensures control of the hazards

As for vitagen process :

Skim milk Pasteurized

Inoculation with culture

Add fruit juice

Storage tank

Homogenazation

Mixing

Packing

Fermentation 2 days

Chilled

Cooled

Principle #3 Establish Critical Limits

A critical limit (CL) is the maximum and/or minimum value to which a biological, chemical, or physical parameter must be controlled at a CCP to prevent, eliminate, or reduce to an acceptable level the occurrence of a food safety hazard. control The critical limit is usually a measure such as time, temperature, water activity (Aw), pH, weight, or some other measure that is based on scientific literature and/or regulatory standards.

Vitagen could stand around 6 weeks after being produced. The Vitagen that had been supplied to the supermarket will be collected 3 or 4 days before the expiry date. Those workers have a schedule so that they will not miss the date.

The pH of the Vitagen is 4 and it can be consumed by gastric patient.

Principle #4 Monitor the CCP's

When CCPs and critical limits have been identified it is important to have a way to monitor and record what is happening at each CCP. Typically monitoring will involve measuring parameters such as temperature and time. However, how you monitor and how often will depend on the size and nature of your business. Monitoring should in all cases be simple, clear and easy to do

Vitagen research and development laboratory is staffed by the finest technical personnel who are in constant pursuit to develop new & innovative products. They also research into the use of new equipment and technologies as well as new manufacturing processes in order to improve the efficiency of our plant and the quality of our manufactured products.

A specialized Quality Control unit keeps a daily check on products through regular testing at every stage of manufacturing to ensure conformity with the highest international standards.

1. Microbiological Tests

2. The Chemical Composition

3. Physical Characteristics

4. Organoleptic Evaluation

Principle 5 - Establish Corrective Actions

Where there is a deviation from established critical limits, corrective actions are necessary. An important purpose of corrective actions is to prevent foods which may be hazardous from reaching customers. Therefore, corrective actions should include the following elements:

determine and correct the cause of non-compliance;determine the disposition of non-compliant product; andrecord the corrective actions that have been taken. Specific corrective actions should be developed in advance for each CCP and included in the HACCP plan. As a minimum, the HACCP plan should specify what is done when a deviation occurs, who is responsible for implementing the corrective actions, and that a record will be developed and maintained of the actions taken.

Principle 6: Establish record keeping procedures.

The HACCP regulation requires that allplants maintain certain documents, including its hazard analysis and written HACCP plan, and records documenting the monitoring of critical control points, critical limits, verification activities, and the handling of processing deviations.

Halal inspection will conduct every 6 month by authorized department to ensure the product’s ingredient still fulfill the requirement needed.

Principle 7: Establish procedures for verifying the HACCP system is working as intended.

Validation ensures that the plans do what they were designed to do; that is, they are successful in ensuring the production of safe product. Plants will be required to validate their own HACCP plans. FSIS will not approve HACCP plans in advance, but will review them for conformance with the final rule. Verification ensures the HACCP plan is adequate, that is, working as intended. Verification procedures may include such activities as review of HACCP plans, CCP records, critical limits and microbial sampling and analysis. FSIS is requiring that the HACCP plan include verification tasks to be performed by plant personnel. Verification tasks would also be performed by FSIS inspectors. Both FSIS and industry will undertake microbial testing as one of several verification activities. the occurrence of the identified food safety hazard.

Vitagen’s research and development laboratory is staffed by the finest technical personnel who are constantly in pursuit of innovative new products. They also research into the use of new equipment and technologies as well as productive new manufacturing processes in order to improve the efficiency of our plant and the quality of our manufactured products

How are we going to ensure that the product is safe?

As consumer, we must know whether the product that we consumed is safe or not. Therefore, to ensure that the product is safe, we must look on the expiry date first. The expiry date is that point in time when a product is no longer within acceptable specifications for potency and stability. It is important for us to know when the product is expired so that, we could know the product is spoiled and cannot be used anymore, It is also prevent us from buying the product that is already expired. For Muslim consumers, it is very important to identify HALAL logo on the product. Furthermore, we have to make sure that the product is labeled with ISO and HACCP. ISO 22000 is standard developed by the International Organization for Standardization dealing with food safety. This is a general derivative of ISO 9000. ISO 22000 standard: The ISO 22000 international standard specifies the requirements for a food safety management system that involves interactive communication, system management, prerequisite programs, and HACCP principles.

HACCP is Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point which is a systematic preventive approach to food safety that addresses physical, chemical, and biological hazards as a means of prevention rather than finished product inspection. HACCP is used in the food industry to identify potential food safety hazards, so that key actions can be taken to reduce or eliminate the risk of the hazards being realized. The system is used at all stages of food production and preparation processes including packaging, distribution, etc. So that, it is significant for the product to have ISO and HACCP in order to assure the safety of that product. Besides that, we should look on nutritional labeling of the product. Usually, there are nutritional facts table on the product. From there, we could know specifically the composition of nutrient content in the product. There are also bilingual ingredient statement and nutrient analysis report which is a database analysis of product formula. In the certain product, allergen statement is presented. This is important statement to aware consumers who are allergy on any ingredients in the product.

Product safety implies absence or acceptable and safe levels of contaminants, adulterants, naturally occurring toxins or any other substance that may make food injurious to health on an acute or chronic basis. Hence, we must ensure that the product we consumed is safe. Remember that, "We are what we eat. Our nutritional status, health, physical and mental depends on the food we eat and how we eat it.

Based on the seven principles of HACCP, the requirements needed for the product is safe

for consumers.

Input

- The input or basic material used to produce vitagen is culture milk that is V. There are

several others product under Malaysia Milk Sdn Bhd (MMSB) such as marigold and

vitagen itself. The differences between vitagen and other cultured milk is type of bacteria

used. Vitagen used lactobacillus as their bacteria in production of culture milk. This

bacteria is imported from Chr. Hansen lab, Denmark while skim milk used imported from

New Zealand. The bacteria are not growth in Malaysia due to unsuitable condition and

also to make sure the quality and quantity of bacteria produced.

Process

1. Man

- From our observation, most of the worker hired by MMSB was foreigner instead of

local people , this might be due to the cost of employing the worker itself. It also

shows that academic qualification is not really important in order to be a worker at

their factory. Some job specification might be considered such as the skill to handle

the machine.

2. Machine

- From what we saw, in order to increase production rate, many machines were used.

Vitagen’s company can produced up to 700 000 of their product everyday.

- Vitagen have many flavours, and the factory only produce one flavor at one time. In

order to produce another flavour, the pipe where the milk flows will be rinsed with

the flow of water until clear. The calibration will be done if any problem occurs.

- Thus, it shows that the machine used has very high quality and can perform very well.

3. Material

- The main food ingredients used by this company to produced vitagen are raw milk

powder which will be skim later and lactobacillus. The Lactobacillus is imported

from Chr. Hansen’s lab, Denmark because our country cannot growth this type of

bacteria due to many factors. Chr. Hansen’s lab is known as a world leading

biotechnology company which has been supplying high quality bacterial cultures to

the dairy industry worldwide for over 100 years.

- The packaging material is made by the factory itself for specific and quality purpose.

If the product not be able to sell, they will collect back from mini/super market in

order to recycle/reused the bottle. So it will undergo many processes in order to make

sure the container’s quality is maintained.

- The representative of vitagen’s company mentioned, their product only will last for 6

week, in order to prevent resident to it, they will collect their product before the

expired date.

Cooled

4. Methods

Skim milk

Pasteurized

Fermentation (2 days)

Chilled

Homogenization

Mixing

Storage tank

Inoculation with culture

Add fruit juice

Packing

Product

Vitagen with many flavours such as :

- Vitagen Orange Flavour (Less Sugar) - 38 kcal

- Vitagen Grape Flavour (Less Sugar) - 38 kcal

- Vitagen LB Flavour (Less Sugar) - 40 kcal

- Vitagen Orange Flavour - 47 kcal

- Vitagen Apple Flavour - 49 kcal

Other than that MMSB also produced many other product for instance yogurt, jelly and collagen milk.

The products produced only for sale in Malaysia and will not be export. Their product only available in Malaysia and Singapore.

Conclusion Vitagen

As the conclusion, everyone regardless of age can drink Vitagen. Even pregnant or nursing women can consume it too. But for asthmatics and diabetics person are advisable to consult their physicians before drinking. It cannot be given to babies below 12 months old. We are encouraged to drink at least a bottle daily to renew the good bacteria in the digestive system. Once the bottle is open, it is recommended to be consumed within 2-3 hours. We should always keep Vitagen in the refrigerator within 2-3 hours after purchasing. Vitagen is good for our health especially for our digestive system. A healthy lifestyle comes from a healthy digestive system.