Frequency of clean breaks for edible oil silo tanks

Hi

Does anyone have any suggestions on how frequently I should have clean breaks in a Silo of edible oil. This is a low risk item that does not support microbial growth. When we have clean breaks, should we empty the tanks totally or can we leave a low amount of oil e.g. 500 gallons?

I've been seeing if you can drain it down to say, 1 to 3% and document your break in lots you're doing pretty well.  If you can drain it to zero, clean, and document, obviously that is perfect world.  Doing either may be costly depending upon how readily able you are to do so.

Primarily, though, your operation should do a risk analysis on this ingredient, history of recalls, etc.  You should also do risk analysis of *cleaning* the tank as well.  In a previous operation, we found through risk analysis that it was better if we do not clean them, but inspect first, clean if necessary.

Not sure if the final product is FDA or USDA regulated, but a consideration to go with RMAV's comments - how are you handling traceability when not completely cleaning the tank? Especially with products like bulk oil, which can mix pretty thoroughly when more is added to existing product in a bulk container, how do you determine a break? If you can do an RA to justify not cleaning, might want to set a cleaning/clean break schedule frequency to allow physical inspection/maintenance of the tank and just to have some sort of break (I think I did once a quarter at a previous position).

KTD

Edible oil tanks should be emptied and cleaned thoroughly inside (workers must be equipped with oxygen level measurement equipment at all times).

Frequency can be determined through the literature available for each kind of edible oil.

Never cleaning an edible oil is a VERY BAD practice in my opinion, as far as traceability is concerned and of course as far food safety is concerned.

A tainted batch can taint all subsequent batches and this may lead to huge recalls and unacceptable profit loss for the company.

Start doing it once a year (during general maintenance, when the whole factory is shut down or barely working).

Regards,

Evangelos