Looking to ensure the absolute safety of prepackaged foods for spaceflight, NASA partnered with the Pillsbury Company to create a new, systematic approach to quality control (Source: NASA)
When astronauts take food up into space, it has to be free of microbes or else they could get really sick. So, again, NASA enlisted the help of a partner — Pillsbury — to help them come up with a solution.
They soon came to the conclusion that the existing quality control methods just weren’t enough to tackle the problem.
Pillsbury could have gone the way of spot-checking the final products to make sure they could go up in space, but instead, the company decided to revamp their entire manufacturing setup instead.
Pillsbury called it the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) system.