I am looking for some advice on environmental monitoring. We manufacture pet treats/supplements. We have a cold extruded room, so no heat and no water is used. Every product is mirco tested before being sent out. We used to swab zone 1-4 for Salmonella, E-coli, and Listeria. We have switched to doing APC, TEC, Mold, and Yeast for Zone 1. We have been swabbing some of the same stuff to try and get a range down and determine what is to high of a count. When we swab it is during production so raw material is very likely to be on the swab when tested. We were worried about testing zone 1 and it coming back positive with something so we decided to switch to indicators. We swab monthly. We also have ATP swabs but have not used them yet because the categories of what surface we are testing needs to be inputting and have the right RLU.
- Should I just be swabbing after equipment is clean and not during production?
- Are there better indicators?
- Should we switch back to just Salmonella, Listeria, E-coli?
- Are there any ranges for APC?