Fumigation in Plant & Warehouses

Dear All,

As per my old company experiences (pharma & dry food product) - we were most bothered about Fumigation of Plant, Warehouses, Transportation in a regular interval. But this is my first experience with a beverage manufacturer - and there is no such practise of fumigation.Can you please share your experiences?.


Regards,
Anish

Can anyone help me on the above query?.

One would only consider fumigation if one had drastic issues with insect pests. If yoyu do not have issues then you do not need to worry about it..It is Simple as that. If you were to supply the organic industry then fumigation would be out of the question.

So a corrective action rather than a preventive action.

Can anyone help me on the above query?.

Dear Anish,

One more consideration is the quality risk of the food product being manufactured as well as the manufacturing environment. For instance, in areas where you require minimal Aerial counts(man. environment), fumigation will have to be routine to ensure that the aerial microbial load is to the minimum and would not affect the the quality of the final product. Thus I think depending on the situation this should be an OPRP.



agwanda

Hi Anish,

If you are now out of the dry facilites (lucky!) you probably will not have to worry about fumigating at all!

The nature of beverage production and the through wet cleans and sanitizations on a daily basis/per batch, 99% of the time, will eliminate the possiblity of bugs taking hold, laying eggs and completing a life cycle causing an infestation. Wet cleans are fully capable of eliminating the need to fumigate. If the beverage products they make are canned/tetra packed, etc (fully sealed and enclosed) there should be minimal to no risk of infestation of that product, the transport (if kept clean), or the warehouse (again if kept clean).

Think back to your dry experience, I bet they cleaned on the basis of per day or week, sweeping or blow down with conmpressed air only, trying to move dust to break up the life cycle of the bugs/eggs that are impossible to fully remove from dry products. Becuase you could not wet clean, and if the plant was in a hot and humid place like India, you would have to fumigate on a regular interval just to keep infestation at bay!

Dear All,

As per my old company experiences (pharma & dry food product) - we were most bothered about Fumigation of Plant, Warehouses, Transportation in a regular interval. But this is my first experience with a beverage manufacturer - and there is no such practise of fumigation.Can you please share your experiences?.


Regards,
Anish

Hi Anish,

IMEX of working in a meat processing industry, we are doing monthly fumigation to eliminate / completely get rid of pest that may compromise the food safety of our food. Probable reason is because Meat smells bad during decomposition and its tendency to attract a lot of pest is high.

When I moved to a beverage manufacturing company fumigation is only carried out only when there is a high pest infestation. Juice and beverage ,IMO, has lesser tendency to attract pest compared to meat and poultry.

Kind regards,
food safety boy