Specification for microbiological level of canteen tools?

Can anybody help me?

I'm working for a food company, apart from a QA staff, I also involve in Canteen management committee, one of my job for it is sampling all tools sending out for microbiological analysis, but the problem here is that I don't have any specification for microbiological level of canteen tools at all

Badly in need a help!

Dear huynh cong tai,

There are many possibilities / guidelines. In yr case, a local regulatory standard may control ?.

What parameters are you interested in ?
As an idea, satisfactory limits for APC are often in the range 10 – 100 cfu/cm^2 (cleaned/sanitised food contact surface prior to use) but sometimes less, sometimes more.

Rgds / Charles.C

Dear Charles.C,

Firstly, thank you so much for yr ideas,
but actually, In my country, we just have regulatory standards for canteen food, but we don' have any for canteen tools,
the parameters that I'm caring about are: TPC, Coliform, and E.coli

Please advice,

Thanks,

Tai cong.Huynh

Dear Tai cong.Huynh,

Here is example of limits in use for some Indian manufacturing processes –
micro limits EIC India 2007.png   29.9KB   30 downloads

(limits for generic E.coli will logically equal those given in Table for Coliform)
(“absent” referred in Table is based on a procedure of swabbing an area of 25cm^2)

Rgds / Charles.C

PS (added) the (aerobic count) application to irregular shaped things like knives and forks tends to get a bit tricky where defined areas are concerned. Some procedures exist where counts per utensil (via a rinsed swab procedure) are used, or miniaturised agar contact methods.

eg evaluation fcs restaurants 2001.pdf   137.09KB   79 downloads