Tony:
I haven't heard of operators wearing chain mail in a production environment like this. Do you find that there is deterioration of the gloves over time? It seems to me that this would pose a risk of metal fragments getting into products. Food safety standards that I'm familiar with specifically call out controls around metal in the production environment. Do you have any sort of metal detection in your process?
Thanks in advance for sharing.
Jon
Hi Jon
Our operators would replace the gloves before they deteriorated to any extent where they would pose a risk of
metal contamination. The gloves tend to be very durable though. If it is of concern then you could inspect weekly and replace as necessary. We did not deem
metal detection necessary as our system was largely enclosed, the product filtered, the empty bottles covered and it was impossible to get a glove into a bottle accidentally. Also we had never received a complaint of metal from this source nor found any in bottles rejected by the scanners (Which are designed to pick up foreign bodies as well as damaged bottles).
The operators that were wearing chain mail did not tend to work on filling machines but other parts of the production line. Fillers were run empty and rinsed in the event of a breakage.
Please feel free to ask if you have any other concerns.
Regards,
Tony
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