Sanitation Program for plastic bottle manufacturer
Hello everyone:
I'm a QA manager for a plastic bottle manufacturer, I'm new to the industry of plastics but I have some years under my belt for food industry, now I was informed that we need to start the process for us to get qualified for SQF and one of the first topics that came to my head was sanitation program, we are qualified for GMP's right now and our sanitation basically consists of us cleaning at the end of every shift our shuttles where bottles are dispensed to the liner inside a box, and then ATP testing every week and environmental testing every quarter, we clean the shuttles with sanitizing wipes and alcohol
Our ATP testing had been pretty consistent and well below the 30 marks, we test the shuttles and the interior of our bottles, the question now is, would this be sufficient for SQF standard? what other practices have you implemented that help improve sanitation?
We have what I consider a killing step (170 degrees minimum to mold the plastic) right before its packaged, what about molds and other machine equipment? would it be sufficient to just wipe clean with wipes and alcohol since we have a killing step right before packaging?
Any direction from plastic expert would be really appreciated.
Thank you
Brenda.
Hello everyone:
I'm a QA manager for a plastic bottle manufacturer, I'm new to the industry of plastics but I have some years under my belt for food industry, now I was informed that we need to start the process for us to get qualified for SQF and one of the first topics that came to my head was sanitation program, we are qualified for GMP's right now and our sanitation basically consists of us cleaning at the end of every shift our shuttles where bottles are dispensed to the liner inside a box, and then ATP testing every week and environmental testing every quarter, we clean the shuttles with sanitizing wipes and alcohol
Our ATP testing had been pretty consistent and well below the 30 marks, we test the shuttles and the interior of our bottles, the question now is, would this be sufficient for SQF standard? what other practices have you implemented that help improve sanitation?
We have what I consider a killing step (170 degrees minimum to mold the plastic) right before its packaged, what about molds and other machine equipment? would it be sufficient to just wipe clean with wipes and alcohol since we have a killing step right before packaging?
Any direction from plastic expert would be really appreciated.
Thank you
Brenda.
Hi Brenda,
The specifics will inevitably relate to the relevant SQF clauses.
i'm neither a SQF nor Plastics expert but, IIRC, based on previous SQF threads here, for EMPG there is likely to be some perfunctory involvement with micro testing for a food contact material unless you can generate a sufficiently pervasive risk assessment as to a negligible risk of "process" contamination. Are you already doing such testing ?