Food safety is important to all of us. Both the consumer and the supplier should feel confident that their food is unspoilt and free from contamination. Since food product safety is ultimately a management responsibility, it is not surprising that considerable effort has been devoted to monitoring and controlling conditions at all stages of food processing, from initial production through distribution, storage, display to point-of-sale. A preventative approach involving control of the ingredients, production process, and storage environment is the preferred method of ensuring uncontaminated and safe supplies.

In any preventative HACCP system approach, temperature plays an important role in maintaining quality throughout the process but particularly at the critical control points, which occur at certain stages in the production, distribution, and sale of food. Conventional contact or penetration probes using thermocouple or RTD sensors are often not the most appropriate means to measure food temperatures due to being time consuming as well as, the possibility of contaminating the products.

Infrared thermometers on the other hand, can overcome these issues as they are capable of rapid, non-contact measurement of temperature in both solid and liquid states at a distance.