What finished product to hold in the event of a pest finding?

Just had an audit completed in the plant.  One of the findings was that we did not include hold procedures in the event of a pest finding in our finished product.  The main question that I think needs to be answered is what do we place on hold?  If we find a fly in one package of product how extreme must we be?  We state that product will be  placed on hold but would we just go back to the last good check completed by the quality team?  Just not sure where to go with this.  We have our plant exclusion tactics in place and have only a couple of complaints over 20 years.  Just not sure. :shutup:  :shutup:  :shutup:

What standard Jim?

Would depend on your product/process. Last acceptable check would be the generally accepted practice, but it would depend on how you conduct your checks, how often, the extent of the finding, product, etc. 

Here's hoping you would have to perform an awful lot of finished goods inspections to find evidence of pests

The more I think about the auditors question, the more concerned/confused I am

Let's assume your product is a can of soup..........HTH would you ever know?  Isn't your pest control process supposed to prevent this from happening in the first place?

Let's also assume it's 1 package, you only perform FG checks once/shift (contents only) and you produce 1000 units/ hour during 12 hours.............even if you checked just 2% of those, that would be 240 finished goods packages to check.............who's going to perform those checks??? And what is management going to say about this

And let's also assume you find 1 more pest.......you'd need to include a pass/fail qualifier on this one

Wow, my brain hurts---------------i wish  Jim E was still on line........i have sooooo many questions about this

Sorry guys been a busy little beaver. 

The Standard is BRC the and should explain a little further that this was part of our internal audit and our own auditor made the NC.  It was recommended that if a pest (say fly) was found that we investigate the process flow to ensure no infestation.  If nothing is found we can say it was likely a one off.  We manufacturer frozen vegetable product with quality checks conducted every 30 minutes but we will produce over 150,000 pounds an hour of finished product.  So yes review of product is likely out of the question and the investigation would determine what we do going forward would you say?

Got it

So if you find a fly, you could then do a walk through to ensure the fly lights are all functioning and that all exterior doors are closed. 

I'm gathering he gave you the NC because it wasn't specifically mentioned in your HOLD program? You could add something that says;

If evidence of pest(s) is found in during processing and/or finished goods that lot will be placed on hold pending pest audit of the plant which includes verifying that pest control devices are functioning and all exterior doors are closed as well as a review of ship/receive records to verify that trucks were against the bumpers correctly and all incoming goods did not show any evidence of pests.

That way the lot should only be on hold for 1 hour max and can still get shipped out that day or at the latest, the next day.

Agree with Scampi, if it is "really needed" to have document procedure, I would say that in case of deviation, a risk assessment should be made on the extent of observation and the condition of the barriers to prevent pests only then decision can be made on what really needs to be done on the finished product.