Glass and Brittle Plastics Control

Hello, maybe you all can share some expertise as my company uses different liquors in our chocolates and baked goods. Problem is, there are boxes and boxes of glass alcohol bottles. We like to experiment for the holiday flavors, so we have every type possible. I'm curious for SQF if I need to switch out all the products into a more durable plastic, or if simply documenting the quantity and location is sufficient? If anyone had this issue and perhaps has links for replacement containers or types, that would be great. Also, we do wine pairings and ship glass bottles with our product. Do we need some sort of nonbreakable sleeve to encase the wines? (We don't bottle the wines). Finally, maybe a bit overkill, but since the alcohols are flammable, does that need any special care? Lock-box, stored apart, etc? Oh! Do I also need to control this as far as making sure the employees aren't secretly enjoying the ingredients? Hard to enforce "no drugs or alcohol" with a mini market of booze in the back. Thank you, Michael.

Hello,

 

Maybe you all can share some expertise as my company uses different liquors in our chocolates and baked goods. Problem is, there are boxes and boxes of glass alcohol bottles. We like to experiment for the holiday flavors, so we have every type possible.

 

I'm curious for SQF if I need to switch out all the products into a more durable plastic, or if simply documenting the quantity and location is sufficient?

 

If anyone had this issue and perhaps has links for replacement containers or types, that would be great.

 

Also, we do wine pairings and ship glass bottles with our product. Do we need some sort of nonbreakable sleeve to encase the wines? (We don't bottle the wines)

 

Finally, maybe a bit overkill, but since the alcohols are flammable, does that need any special care? Lock-box, stored apart, etc?

 

Oh! Do I also need to control this as far as making sure the employees aren't secretly enjoying the ingredients?

Hard to enforce "no drugs or alcohol" with a mini market of booze in the back.

 

Thank you,

Michael

For SQF, you must have a glass policy in place and how you are going to control the hazard.

If you can, put the glass bottle samples in the R & D office if you have one. We keep our glass beer samples in their instead of our production cooler.

We also use wine as an ingredient. We keep it in a locked closet with limited access.

Both ways keep employees from getting access and limit the amount of glass on the production floor.

Glass and Brittle Plastics are pretty hard to control in general vs metals.  Most quality programs ban these items (as well as wood) since most controls would not be able or have a hard time identifying these types of contamination during processing

My program bans these types of containers and requires the supplier to send a sample for approval prior shipping.  During receiving as well as prior to and after material use we have a pallet inspection requirement, that requires repalletization (if the pallet is broken) and/or hold/investigation process if the broken pieces have the potential of entering the machine or product.

If glass or brittle plastic needs to be used, i would implement a process that checks the conditions of the containers before and after use and if they are found to be compromised to hold the lot/batch in order to perform a product impact assessment.