Common practices for protective wear
Looking for common practices out there. Our food processing environment is one that is cool, 55*F, daily. Many employees wear baseball caps or "hoodies"...exposed (although a hair net is worn on the head). I am in a debate about "procedures". I would prefer that there be no hoodies or caps allowed, however it has been past practice prior to my starting. I have implemented the wearing of a hair net on the head AND a hair net over the cap or hoodie. This has become the debate.
I am looking for feedback from others in a similar environment as to what is allowed in your facility (I.e. wearing hats/hoodies or not)
Thanks for your help!
Hi -
I understand where you are coming from. I am sure you have put forth the angles around Occupational Safety & Hygiene/Food Safety angle on this.
I am just curious as whether you have you tried, taking some swabs like APC from such attires and sharing Safety related Videos to convey that point and convince the team that it is about their Safety & Consumer's safety which should always trump their personal preferences.
Hope this helps !
Regards,
Agasr
We allow hoodies in our plant (38-50F temps), but ask that a hairnet is worn directly on the hair and then one over the hoodie. We also request that those wearing the hoodie wear earplugs for hearing protection instead of muffs.
I have experienced your pains with hoodies, winter hats, and baseball hats, but the wearing of them all depends on what type of processing you are in.
Currently, I work in a seafood processing where it is same temperature as you stated, constantly wet, and fish parts everywhere. We allow hoodies, winter hats (without strings), and baseball hats on the production floor because we want them to stay warm, dry, and clean if possible, although they do have to wear hairnets under and over if they wear anything additional. Our reasoning for allowing these items is because raw fish is going to go through further processing. I have also worked in RTE meat processing, where we did not allow any because we are the last people to touch the product and wanted to minimize all possible foreign materials.
Hope this helps.
Some units in our facility like raw material handling, warehouse, retorting have baseball cap as a uniform but they are also wearing hair net. The caps are not allowed to bring outside the facility. In the area where the products are filled into primary packaging, they only wear hair net
We are a ready to eat seafood hot smoke facility and have had a problem in the past with hoodies being a safety issue ie: limited visibility / pull strings / employees not washing on a regular bases/ fuzz or glitter decoration
We keep all our production areas at 8c and provide company own toques that are color coded by area, washed nightly, with hairnets under and over.
Only issue we have now is keeping them in plant during the winter as it can be much colder outside and employees forget to take them off. We keep do a daily count as we only keep a certain number in circulation.