Are Silicone wedding rings ok in a food manufacturing environment?
About 12 hours ago I learned that silicone is actually being used to make wedding rings and bands. A quick google search pulls up many choices. While an excellent choice for the poor gentleman preparing to propose to his lovely dame, I am not sure if this is an acceptable ring to be worn in the food manufacturing environment, No setting would be allowed but I am inclined to say this is acceptable. Anybody have experience with these?
Like everything else it depends on what you are doing in your process. They aren't going to be picked up in a metal detector, but in the same breath they aren't going to cause any major concerns if a customer were to receive one. We are a flour manufacturer, so we allow them as well as just plain bands, as long as they can be picked up by the metal detector. We also have very little to no risk of them ending up in a bag as our hands are not involved in our processes.
Hard to say. Ultimately I would say that if you allow rings without stones in your plant anyway they should be permitted, it isn't any higher risk than a button on a shirt or pants at that point. If you've banned all jewelry including wedding bans then it's easy and this would also be banned.
If you do allow wedding bands, I would heed SQFconsultants advice and address hand washing under wedding bands as part of your GMP procedures, and be wary that if you have processes that require direct hand contact it's an obvious source of contamination.
My experience with allowing wedding rings, whatever material, is that I found employees with several plain rings.....how to ask if they have married so many times? :)
best regards,
Leila
Hello,
Some standards allow wearing of wedding ring and band inside food processing area. In our company we don't allow any personal effects to be carried inside to lessen the risk of loose items going into the product. Before hiring, applicants were told about our policy and it's up to them if the would accept the job or not. Imagine if you have let say 20 employees wearing rings, It is an additional work to make inventory every start and of the shift to ensure nobody lost one inside production area.
regards,
redfox
We don't allow any rings in our facility. Even though a plain band is allowed by the standard, we don't allow them for safety reasons.
No jewellery of any kind, silicone depending on the colour and your finished product and process could be a HUGE choking hazard!
We only may an exception for medic alert, which we have not had to do as of yet
There is the cleaning of the ring, but also the safety aspect of the ring to consider. Could it catch on something and cause someone to lose their finger? All in all, we found they are not worth the risk.