Raw beef boxing
I'm wondering if anyone has any feedback on this and might be able to help me out.
Our inhouse inspection service has brought up a concern in regards to an area in the facility where we package offal products. The products are collected, brought to this area and boxed up. Recently, they've had complaints in regards to employees grabbing pre-made boxes, opening them, then filling them with product, all while wearing the same rubber gloves and not sanitizing between getting the box and touching the product.
Though I agree it is a concern as there could be dust or cardboard particles still on the box being transferred to and contaminating product, we don't have a procedure that specifically addresses this concern. Other facilities, albeit they are not this facility, have conducted this task in the same manner. We also have letters of guarantee and/or COA's for the boxes, and they also come to our facility wrapped in plastic.
How are others handling this?
We had one person assembling boxes, another to put in the plastic liner
Person A did not wear gloves OR touch the liner or product
Person B wore gloves and did not touch the box (tear of liner, insert, pull down over box
A bit of a pain to be sure but manageable
We had one person assembling boxes, another to put in the plastic liner
Person A did not wear gloves OR touch the liner or product
Person B wore gloves and did not touch the box (tear of liner, insert, pull down over box
A bit of a pain to be sure but manageable
We do something very similar with incoming raw boxed beef and some packaged items that fail inspection. Separation of contact functions. One person is touching cardboard, but has no product contact -- second person has product contact but does not touch cardboard.
Yes, touching the box with the same gloves that touch the raw beef can contaminate the beef, but I would be a lot more worried about the outside of the box getting contaminated as that could spread through transport vehicles, other touching boxes and basically an entire facility if several workers touch the contaminated box and other things afterward.
I would recommend using the same procedure the other members already mentioned here.
Others are correct, despite your cardboard being certified "clean", I'd expect the cleanliness to only be up to the standards of cardboard. It's generally accepted in the food industry that cardboard is usually not a direct food-contact surface, especially for something like meat. Your post doesn't make reference to a plastic liner, but I assume that you are using one. The transfer of carboard dust to the meat is one issue, but the transfer of meat to the outside of other cardboard packages is yet another. For this reason, having extra hands to handle each step of the packaging process as Scampi suggested can be very useful. If you've got a bigger budget, a machine to automatically open cases and insert a liner could be a very nice addition to your line!