Query for Listeria Monitoring Requirements

Hi all,

we manufacture dry baked food like cookies, biscotti, cakes etc and comes under under category 2B RTE low risk food.

We do environmental monitoring for Listeria twice a year (5 samples) for FCS and once for non food contact and never got positive results.

Recently our program was modified by consultants and now we have finished product testing for Listeria 3 times annually in addition to the above.

Is it necessary to test Listeria in finished product and if yes, in the above frequency?

Thanks in advance for all valuable input.

PatT 

Hi Pat,

I presume this is a Canadian Regulatory query for a 2B RTE product.

Hopefully someone will know the answer. I recall the cfia website is somewhat tortuous to navigate.

My guess is the last step relates to "verification" if that is one of the requirements, although 3x per year seems pretty meaningless.