Footwear in a dry clean operation
I am curious to know what other facilities are doing in regards to footwear in a dry clean operation.
For example, in a wet clean environment you would normally see a foot bath/boot wash type of set up upon entry to mitigate any potential risk.
I worked in a RTE environment where powdered blends were manufacturered. We did not have anything at the doors into the plant for cleaning footwear. I remembered being surprised when workers were allowed outside with the same shoes they wore inside without any means of sanitizing. I guess the thinking was that the floor will always be unclean, and any product that touches the floor is inedible so what does it matter if the shoes worn are unclean? Also there was minimal Listeria issues in a dry environment.
From a safety perspective, there was also the issue of the treads on shoes becoming gummed up as the powders built up and were never cleaned. A slip hazard if anything!
I would be interested to hear what others have to say.
We are currently testing out a powder sanitizer that we are using in a rubber mat that the employee's walk through. We have found that it sticks to the bottom of the shoes well and doesn't create a 'mess' throughout the facility. We haven't fully implemented yet, but plan to do so.
I had used a granular substance in the past at a wet clean environment which serves a couple purposes.
- Sanitized wheels of carts, pallet jacks etc
- At shift clean up the product was washed down the drain which served as a drain sanitizer as well
However we used foot baths/boot washers for the shoe piece of the equation
Hi all,
I am currently working in a dry blending environment and we have outside shoes and before we go to production we change them with white production shoes.
Hope that makes sense.
Dear PetBone,
The EU POV seems fairly relaxed -
FEDIAF, 2010.pdf 539.75KB 59 downloads
Does yr product / environment specification include L.mono ?
Rgds / Charles.C
I've worked in dry clean facilities with shoe covers past kill step/in packaging and pull over rain boots for the raw area. Foot baths or anything introducing water is problematic. The booties too were a pain. In the end we ended up going with a walkthrough sanitizer sprayer with a sticky mat leading out, it costs roughly 10k, but sanitizes the shoes and it's only alcohol, so it evaporates by the end of the mat. Due to our size / # of employees, the mat had to be changed out after breaks, lunches, etc.
I work for a company that makes film packaging for food products. We are a dry environment but we have had problems with people tracking Listeria welscheri (sp?) into the plant. This is not the L. monocytogenes species that kills people.
We have not identified the source since Listeria occurs in soil, in animal feces, etc. We have bird droppings outside of our plant. I think that people are picking it up from the droppings, especially when it is wet outside due to rain, etc.
We allow people to wear their work shoes home and to keep them in the same locker as their street shoes. We also let delivery people walk through our plant. This is a great potential for cross contamination.
The only way we could control it is to use foot baths with Quaternion Ammonia solution and carpets for drying the shoes. You would have to do swabbing to prove that people aren't tracking in stuff on the bottom of their shoes.