Acceptable limits for equipment swab in sardine canning?
I work at Sardine canning industry. Equipment swab are done to determine effectively of cleaning and sanitation processes. The swabbing is done by using Quick swab test on surface of equipment which direct contact with raw material and equipment. The result is count as TPC per swab. Now, auditor request us must acceptable limits for swabbing.
May I know there is any regulatory for acceptable limits of the equipment swab?
If haven't, how i can determine the acceptable limits?
Can anyone help??
Hello,
As far as I know, there are no legal requirements on acceptable limits for swabbing. It's up to you to determine them, to comply with the limits for your finished products (for which legal requirements exist).
First it's important to set the targets for your cleaning process. For example, is it acceptable to find germs after the cleaning process?
A second step here is to identify whether there are pathogenic bacteria which may survive your canning process and harm your finished product. That is an undesired situation. You need to assure the absence of such species.
I hope that the information above gives you a right direction to improve your quality system.
Kind regards,
Gerard Heerkens
I work at Sardine canning industry. Equipment swab are done to determine effectively of cleaning and sanitation processes. The swabbing is done by using Quick swab test on surface of equipment which direct contact with raw material and equipment. The result is count as TPC per swab. Now, auditor request us must acceptable limits for swabbing.
May I know there is any regulatory for acceptable limits of the equipment swab?
If haven't, how i can determine the acceptable limits?
Can anyone help??
It depends, see -
You could also trend (if you haven't already) all of your result to date, add a measure of volume of production for the day if you can (total kg/day or #cans/day) to help you correlate that data into something meaningful. Then you can see what they highest counts where and review pre op/sanitation records for those days to see if there was a specific known reason the count was high on that particular day. If there was, include a brief statement on the excel sheet for future reference and remove those hits from your calculations.
Take an average of the results. Use that average as your maximum. Anything above that requires a reclean/sanitize. This way you are using data for your facility and you can use it as an area for improvement for the upcoming year and adjust the number down (if you can) as things improve!
You will probably find that there is some correlation between volume processed and/or day of the week and/or new sanitation crew members! And you may also find that you need a mid shift rinse down if you haven't one already