Keeping food processing plants clean is of paramount importance. Businesses that fail to meet strict standards risk being shut down by the authorities, a disaster.
The purpose of this post is to run through some food processing plant hygiene dos and don’ts. The idea is to provide you with all the information you need to stay safe if you’re running or setting up one of these businesses.
Do Practice Personal Hygiene
Start by practicing personal hygiene. Wearing clean uniforms, hats, and hair nets is essential if you’re handling goods or food.
Once you set an example yourself, you should find that the rest of the workforce follows. If you wash your hands thoroughly before touching ingredients, your colleagues will too.
Don’t Skip Audits
As tempting as it may be, skipping audits is a bad idea. You don’t want to do it. That’s because you can’t nip problems in the bud early and deal with them.
If you leave it too long between audits, there’s a risk that conditions will get out of hand and eventually harm the public. And when this happens, it is game over for your brand.
Audits provide you with feedback on what you’re doing right, and what you’ve got wrong. Knowing this helps you make improvements over time, protecting you in the long term.
Do Inspect Your Equipment
When it comes to hygiene, it is critical to inspect your equipment regularly. Conventional cleaning companies won’t always take it apart, look inside, and clean out all the bad stuff. Often, it is just easier for them to ignore it.
For this reason, you will need to do this job yourself. Inspecting your equipment and cleaning out any crumbs or debris helps you stay safe.
Don’t Skip Cleaning Steps
As tempting as it might sound, don’t skip cleaning steps. Make sure you go through all of them to maximum effect and germ-killing action.
If you need to rinse down a large area, using pressure washers is sometimes useful. These can remove ingrained dirt and grime from a wider area when used properly.
You could also use electrostatic approaches if you can’t access all the sides of a specific piece of equipment.
Do Control Contamination
You should also work toward controlling contamination as much as possible when operating a food processing plant. Adulterating products with ingredients from another line is not a good idea. You certainly don’t want customers pulling mice out of their tins.
Therefore, store meat and vegetables separately. Also, store raw and cooked in different parts of the facility to prevent bacteria from hopping from one to the other.
Don’t Overlook Employee Training
Finally, make sure your people know how to conduct themselves properly in your facility. Check they understand the basic rules of hygiene and how to apply them in their working practices.
Sometimes you will find that staff need refresher courses on handling food. Running these throughout the year helps you train new intake while reminding existing employees about the proper practices you expect from them.
