Difference between High Risk and High Care Area

Would anybody clarify me the difference between High Risk and High Care Area? It been always confusing for me. Please give your opinion with examples.

Regards

Martin Blue

High care tends to be around products which aren't fully cooked, e.g. salads, sandwiches etc where you're limiting the risks as far as you can (e.g. by washing). High risk is normally where you are doing some kind of heat treatment into the high risk area. Both can be ready to eat or ready to reheat.

In practice, high care and high risk are similar in terms of control, however, high risk is always a touch tighter; think using sanitiser spray for everything entering the area, captive tools, equipment etc. whereas in practical terms in high care factories, it might not be practical to sanitise. Similarities would be around the clothing controls (captive footwear, similar gowning procedure etc.)

My example would be ready meals and sandwiches. Ready meals would be fully cooking your ingredients going into high care, sandwiches would not. Also it's not practical to sanitise bread into a high care area as bread can't be fully sealed (ewww, soggy) so in a sandwich factory you wouldn't have the same kind of microbiological risks in your low care area because there is an understanding that it can't be controlled as well so you would never cook your own meat whereas you would in a ready meal factory. There is an increasing trend though for high care ready meals with raw vegetable components. Personally, I'm not a fan because if you have the same area for raw meat and veg processing then I'm not sure any veg washer can remove the potential contamination.

Thanks GMO,
I really appreciate it. Well explained.

regards

martinblue

Dear Martinblue,

There are a few discussions related to this topic elsewhere on the forum .

One comment is that the use/interpretation of the terminologies may well depend on yr specific product / process (??). I guess this is partly already indicated in GMO's post.

Rgds / Charles.C