Important Features of Metal-Detectable Food Pens

Workers in the food industry have a responsibility to ensure everything they produce is completely safe for consumers. As food production becomes more industrialized, maintaining a safe environment free from contaminants is a challenge. Contamination can happen under many circumstances, but industry experts are coming up with new ways to prevent it. 

One of the most common ways to track and prevent contamination is to use metal detectors at the end of the production line. Detectable pens check every package of food for machine parts. If your workers use pens during any part of their jobs near the production line, it's important to make sure these pens can be flagged by the metal detectors.

But not all detectable pens are created equal. Here are a few important features to keep in mind when shopping for metal detectable pens.

No Removable Parts

Some pen designs are fully contained, and others have small removable caps or come with tiny nib covers. The nib covers are designed to be removed upon first use, and they could easily be lost on the production line. If your pens come with nib covers, make sure to remove them before they reach the production line. Caps are a bigger problem because they need to stay with the pens at all times. Small caps can be lost into food items more easily than whole pens, so it's best to choose pens that don't need caps in the first place. As long as your pens don't have any small, removable parts and are encased in metal-detectable shells, finding a lost pen by the end of the production line should be easy.

Food-Safe Ink

On the off chance that a metal-detectable pen ends up lost on the production line, the last thing you want is for it to harm a consumer. Not all pen ink is safe for human consumption, and some of it may be toxic. Choosing pens with food-safe ink ensures that your food will be safe for consumption even if a pen makes its way into a shipped package. Ink can also rub off on your workers' gloves and find its way into the food through contact, so using pens with food-safe ink is doubly important.  

Impact-Resistant Materials

Depending on the layout of your food production facility, you may need to choose impact-resistant pens. Finding a whole, unbroken pen in a package of food is relatively easy due to its size. Finding a small piece of metal or plastic that broke off of a pen that dropped from a catwalk is much more difficult. Make sure your metal detectable food pens are also impact resistant for the best chance at keeping your production line free of contaminants.

For more information, contact companies like Detectapro.

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