When disaster strikes....boil advisory...
Hi guys!
I'm looking for ideas/feedback on boil advisories. We recently had a boil scare (meaning it ended up not being our water supply but a few towns over) so now I'm looking into the does and don'ts of a water advisory.
It's easy to simply say halt production and throw everything away, but from a business standpoint this is probably not the most cost effective thing to do.
I want to hear what you all think. If any one has been through a boil advisory, and you don't mind sharing, what steps did you take? What worked? What didn't? What might you do differently next time?
Looking forward to some insightful responses.
~Polly
In my plan, the only alternative for us would be to haul in potable water (water is an ingredient)
We could never process the amount of water we need for daily production but this is not cheap........its probably cheaper to shut down for some
You'd need maintenance involved, can you shut the water off to the processing plant, but still use it to flush toilets? Can you pump water from a tanker to your facility somehow without keeping doors wide open? This is a big thing, its not just managing your water supply
This is a big thing, its not just managing your water supply
Right? Which is what really got me thinking. What about handwashing? Handwahsing with potentially contaminated water seems to be acceptable (not me, the FDA)...the FDA guidance doesn't seems to have an issue with it as long as you aren't using the water on a food contact surface or handling RTE food without gloves (who does that?)
Do you use hand sanitizer after washing? We don't even have hand sanitizer in our facility....
FDA guidance says you can use the water as an ingredient if product is being heated to 185° for at least 1 minute.
Do you send out product for lab testing? How many is a good sample?
So many questions. lol
First question - do you test your incoming water as a routine and second in the event of a boil advisory would be then immediately run a test of the incoming water again?
I am of course assuming that you use straight city water and that you don't run it through an RO system or treat it in anyway.
With that in mind and if the advisory was justified we would shut-down and begin testing - however we don't use straight city water.
The alternate of course is tanker water or bottled water.
For our new greenhouse operation in Costa Rica we'll have rain catchers (they don't call it the rainy season for nothing!) and then the water is filtered and placed in holding tanks - no issues, plus deep wells that will be tested weekly.
I would never think for a moment to use contaminated water for hand washing regardless of the sanitizers , etc.
Our setup recently for a plant that could not run lines for hand sinks was to use portable clean water tank on one side and grey water on the other - washing hands wtih clean warm water and soap and then apply a drop of sanitizer foam.
We just went through this in our plant with the recent flooding. Luckily we were in the middle of a sanitation cycle. We completed our sanitation and waited until the advisory was lifted. Once it was lifted, we re-ran sanitizer on every piece of equipment that used the "dirty" water.
We were drying some product that was made with the suspect product. For that product, we just designated it for industrial use only so it will not be sold to a food company.
Once the advisory was lifted, we dropped all the water holding tanks in the facility. For our water coolers, all the water filters were changed and water reservoirs had to be emptied. We did not worry about hand washing water, since the boil advisory said it was fine to use for hand washing. Following the advisory, we also put in place procedures for future water advisories.
https://www.fda.gov/RegulatoryInformation/Guidances/ucm211373.htm
I saw the FDA guidance and was concerned about the hand washing portion of it.