We all hear about recalls occurring in the food industry on an almost daily basis. Who isn’t familiar with the Peanut Corporation of America recall that resulted in 9 deaths and at least 714 cases of illness from Salmonella? The actual number impacted is higher as the Centers for Disease Control estimates that for every reported case, 38 go unreported. That’s nearly 30,000 people potentially infected from this single recall. One of the key factors that resulted in many of these recalls is poor sanitation in the facility. If conditions are allowed to exist in a facility that promotes growth of bacteria like Salmonella or Listeria, that bacteria will find a way to migrate into the product. In order to control these kinds of conditions, a robust and thorough sanitation program along with a solid environmental monitoring program needs to be developed.
Developing a Sanitation Program in Food Manufacturing
The first thing that should be determined when developing a sanitation program is to identify what kind of sanitation is needed and at what frequency for certain areas. This determination can be made by first examining past environmental testing results for background and then consulting with experienced operators/leaders in your facility, sanitation chemical vendors, and third party companies specializing in sanitation programs.
Once you’ve developed the program, it’s important to determine what resources are needed to complete the tasks at the desired frequency. Some food facilities rely on their production operators to complete sanitation while others have dedicated crews. Most facilities have a combination of both with the operators focusing on sanitation of the equipment in their immediate area and sanitation crews focusing on peripheral areas around the facility. In most programs, a master sanitation schedule is developed as a checklist for operators or sanitarians to complete according to the program needs.
Measuring the Results of your Sanitation Program
Now that you’ve developed your sanitation program, you need to monitor how effective it is. This is done with an environmental monitoring program, or EMP. An effective EMP will monitor different areas of the facility at different intervals through use of swabbing. These swabs are then tested for a pathogen or an indicator organism (typically enterobacteriaceae or EB). Different limits should be set for different areas. For example, food contact surfaces would have the most stringent limits whereas some non-production areas would have higher allowable limits. The testing results should be trended over time to monitor the effectiveness of the sanitation program. If some areas are showing constantly high results, the sanitation program should be modified to better focus sanitation in those areas.
Sanitation is only one part of your overall quality and food safety programs, but it is a critical part that, if neglected, can have serious consequences.
