Hi Everyone,
I’ve browsed this site for a long time but have never made a post or introduced myself – figured this was as good a time as any .
I've been a PCQI for a little over 6 years and have 10 years+ in the baking/snack food industry in production management. Recently, I've been promoted to a QA Director position and am currently in the process of getting us certified with SQF. We manufacture a low risk snack food with low water activity.
I've hit a snag with our environmental monitoring and compressed air sampling. I’ve conducted sampling over the past 4 months which has largely come back <10 CFU/swab for APC and Enterobacteriaceae, with the occasional 20-50 CFU swab mixed in.
We did sample a footpath in our warehouse before cleaning which was <10 for ENT, 750 for APC. Post clean – 3 samples came back <70 CFU for APC.
With our compressed air we tested for Mold and Yeast Count, as well as APC (all via CAMTU system) on all areas of food contact or where CA is used for cleaning. Yeast and Mold did not climb above 2 CFU on any area and for the large portion was <1 CFU. APC was mostly similar – but we did have one sample at 50 CFU.
Edit: Spelling, sentence structure
Hoping someone can point me in the direction of some plain instructions on developing a baseline or standard deviation range for these readings. I’ve seen standard numbers thrown out here and there like 10 CFU for ENT, 250 CFU for APC as a baseline requiring corrective action.
Thanks, and much appreciation for all the great advice I have gotten from here over the years!
Edited by Dhstutzman, 12 September 2022 - 07:49 PM.