FSQA Snippets: Environmental Food Plant Sanitation

Environmental food plant sanitation is more than just cleaning following the 7 Steps (see BLOGs on the 7 Steps of Sanitation for Industrial Food Facilities: https://www.faithfulfoodsolutions.com/post/7-steps-of-sanitation-for-industrial-food-facilities and SSOP Basics: https://www.faithfulfoodsolutions.com/post/ssop-basics).  It is a system that is also heavily dependent on facility design and team member practices, to include robust monitoring.  Elements should include:

• Personal Hygiene – thorough GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) such as hand washing, use of gloves/smocks-uniforms/captive footwear, designated jobs and color coding to prevent cross-contamination of food/food contact surfaces, and dedicated team members for cleaning floors or handling trash/condemn should never have food/food contact surface assignments, to name a few.

• Facility Design – floors, walls, ceilings and equipment should be designed to allow for effective cleaning with no opportunities for bacterial harborage.

• Maintenance – preventative maintenance completion is critical to assure that facility and equipment upkeep is maintained, including assuring maintenance team members do not inadvertently cross-contaminate food/food contact surfaces.

• Material Movement – an effective program should consider the flow of ingredients, packaging and finished products to assure cross-contamination does not occur to food/food contact surfaces or RTE areas.

• Peripheral Areas – airflow and drainage if not properly managed can allow for the entrance of environmental organisms of concern into exposed product areas or onto product.

Environmental Monitoring Programs (EMP) - the first step is to identify the bacteria that the system will target.  A layered approach to environmental monitoring for organisms, such as Listeria, provides important data to eliminate system vulnerabilities that effectively cover the areas mentioned above.  It should include food contact and non-food contact surfaces, and peripheral areas that surround the processing environment to ensure all areas are covered.  Heat maps showing the amount of hits by zone or area can be helpful in eliminating future failures.  Past sites should continue to be monitored as part of the EMP.

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