Allergen Removal with Pressure Washing

Hello

I have searched for this topic but did not find anything.  

We manufacture frozen bread products that go through a blast freezer (spiral).

2 products contain egg, a unique allergen in our facility. 

To clean the blast freezer belts we use a belt washer machine that uses pressure to clean.

The company claims the machine shears the product off the belts and therefore removes any allergens.

They claim we do not need to use any cleaner, but they do not have any documented evidence.

The only documentation I have is the product brochure that states the machine removes allergens and there is a Performance Warranty on the product brochure stating the machine will perform as described.

I doubt that is enough to satisfy an auditor ;)

What we do now is after we manufacture an allergen product we are putting cleaner before the washer head to push the cleaner onto the belts, then after the cleaning put sanitizer before the washer head to sanitize.

We do not always use the cleaner if an allergen product was not produced.

I allergen test the belts and get negatives... but there is a lot of belt. ;)

We are going for SQF and I am wondering if this is enough to satisfy allergen cleaning requirements for the blast freezer.

I cannot seem to find any documentation that pressure washing removes allergens.

Other than my own testing, I cannot find any documentation that the process we are using now is effective.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

If the belt is visibly clean and your swabs are clean, man that's just as good as any of us do for allergen verification. It's up to you to determine how many swabs will be "significant" enough for a validation of the cleaning tech.

Thanks for the help !!