Writing a Food Ingredient Specification That Survives an Audit
There is a quick way to tell whether a specification was written or assembled. Look at any limit and ask how it would be measured. If the document does not say,
Product knowledge and market notes from our export desk in Ningxia — grading, harvest conditions, packaging choices and the questions buyers ask us most.
There is a quick way to tell whether a specification was written or assembled. Look at any limit and ask how it would be measured. If the document does not say,
The demand of goji berry for nitrogen fertilizer The amount of nitrogen absorbed by goji berries will increase with the growth and development of plants.
Recent Decline in Prices of Chinese Goji Berry Recently, the main producing areas of Chinese goji berry have been listed. Although this year’s harvest of
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A result comes back over the limit. Somebody wants to reject the container, somebody else wants to ship it, and both are arguing from the same single number.

“Xanthan gum, food grade, 80 mesh, 1,200 cP.” That line appears on a lot of enquiries, and it is not enough information to quote against — or to compare two quotes with.

Red colour, a pointed tip and a sweet taste prove nothing about where a goji berry grew. Those characteristics move with cultivar, plot, harvest timing, weather, drying method and storage, and every one of them can be reproduced somewhere else.

Every goji quotation carries a number: 180, 250, 280, 350, 580. It is a count of how many berries make up 50 grams, so a lower number means bigger fruit.

Short version, because it is the part that matters: moisture content tells you how much water is in the product. Water activity tells you how much of that water is available — to microorganisms, and to the reactions that quietly ruin texture, colour and flavour. You can hit your moisture…

There is a quick way to tell whether a specification was written or assembled. Look at any limit and ask how it would be measured. If the document does not say, it was assembled.

The request usually arrives as “we want to replace the sugar”, and the honest first answer is that sugar is doing more jobs than sweetening.

Vegetable powders get bought for colour and flavour, and get specified on mesh. That mismatch causes most of the disputes in this category.

A photograph of amber ginger dusted in sugar tells you almost nothing that a buyer needs to know.

A customer once approved a freeze-dried strawberry dice on the bench, then found half of it had turned to red dust by the time it reached the far end of a cereal line.
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