Food plant cleaning and sanitation are critical to a plant’s operations in a way that cleaning in most other facilities is not. The work is not judged by how the building looks at the end of the shift. It is judged by an auditor, often without notice, against a published standard.
Six things a sanitation program needs
We prepare ourselves with the proper personnel, education, equipment, products, certifications and processes. Every one of those is a separate question an auditor can ask, and a gap in any of them is a finding:
- Personnel. Technicians who have worked in food environments before.
- Education. Continual training rather than a certificate from three years ago.
- Equipment. Tools suited to food contact areas and segregated from other work.
- Products. EPA-registered chemicals appropriate to the surface and the process.
- Certifications. Recognized programs, kept current.
- Processes. Documented SSOPs that are actually followed.
The standards we train against
Our industrial technicians continually train on the Global Food Safety Initiative to meet and exceed government regulations and standards, including Sanitation Standard Operating Procedures, SQF, BRCGS, FSSC 22000, HACCP and GMP+ practices.
Clean first, then sanitize
The single most common failure in food plant sanitation is sanitizing a surface that has not been cleaned. If soil or grease is still present, the chemical cannot reach the surface underneath, and that area has not been sanitized no matter what the schedule says.
Read more about food plant cleaning and sanitation, or about our GFSI training.
