FSQA Snippets: Food Plant Sanitation Basics

Sanitation of a food processing environment is critical not only to assure that the product meets food safety and quality excellence, but also to establish a clean break in the processing regimen between production dates.

The 7 Steps of Sanitation follow a sequence designed to remove soils, eliminate pathogens, and ensure regulatory compliance under the SSOP (Sanitation Standard Operating Procedure) plan.  The completion and verification of the sanitation process should be documented.  The steps are Dry Clean, Pre‑Rinse, Apply Detergent (Foam, Gel, and Manual Scrub), Post‑Rinse, Inspect (first by Sanitation team and then by Ops/Quality team at the end of the sanitation process), Final Rinse & Reassembly and Sanitize.

The Operations team can help with this process before leaving and can make the Sanitation process much more efficient as there are typically more processing team members than sanitors.  Further, Sanitation is typically held to a certain time sensitive window so by having the Operations team remove much of the food debris remaining before leaving can greatly benefit the sanitation process.

All team members performing sanitation activities should have documented training on file for each area they are trained to clean.  Each piece of equipment has different requirements for safety and disassembly/reassembly so the steps for proper cleaning should be specific to each.

On a final note, suppliers of sanitation chemicals can provide the necessary training and steps to efficiently clean the equipment and environment using their cleaning products.

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