Hello all,
We have a discussion with a (small) customer of ours who audited us last week.
This is regarding hairnets.
I work at a seed and kernel cleaning and packing facility. Almost all processes are automated and nowhere in the process employees come in contact with the product or stand above it.
Some years ago we had an incident and sinds then employees and visitors must wear hard hats (see picture) These hard hats have replaced the hairnets because:
· The product is fully cleaned by us, and because there is no direct contact the chance is very slim that a hair comes in contact with the product
· The hard hat covers like 80% of the hair and all of our employees (4) have short or no hair
· Hard hat and hairnet where uncomfortable and where the cause of very sweaty heads
· There is no food safety risk regarding hair.
Because we want to make it as easy and comfortable for our employees as possible we scraped the hairnet.
Furthermore we have never had a complaint that hair was found in the product
Our customer want us to wear hairnets because it is in their standard. If there is every a lousy reason, in my opinion, to do something it is simply because it’s in the standard, even if it’s like in the BRC standard or something.
Now I want to arm myself as much as possible for the this audit and the coming audit because I think this will come up more often.
What do you think?