Special Event Procedure Swabbing

We have a crisis management procedure in the event of a crisis but one of our customers are looking for a special event swabbing procedure. I have read a lot on what to do in the event of roof leak, drain back up, pipe leak, etc. I know what to do with the product and that we need to swab for Salmonella and Listeria after but, I am having difficulty putting this together into a procedure. Do I have to list each event and the what we will do under each special circumstance? Do you make a new procedure for this or add it to your Crisis Management Procedure? How do you know how many swabs are sufficient to take after? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hi,

We have added the specific actions required after different crises events to our Crisis Management Program. Since each event has slightly different actions required, we wanted to specify for each type of event. We also cannot possibly include every possible event, so we tried to generalize and include in the program that other types of crises will be evaluated at the time in order to justify the actions needed.

Knowing how many swabs are sufficient cannot be determined ahead of time, that'll depend on the specific situation and how severe the situation is. A risk assessment should be conducted at the time of creating these procedures and at the time of the crisis event since it is almost impossible to predict every detail of a crisis event. Swabs may also be conducted serially, such as taking more swab samples if there is a positive hit. 

One of our customers requires swabs of the area of new equipment installation.

So I suppose you might consider adding that situation as well.

Marshall

Hi jportz,

You main goal would be an effective clean up following such an incident.

Wouldn’t you have an established environmental swabbing programme such that it would be a case of implementing a full set of tests at all locations following the incident?

New equipment swabbing and area swabbing should be included in commissioning plans.

Kind regards,

Tony

Perhaps instead of a spec'ed out protocol for each end every conceivable event, you just name a few examples and suggest that at a minimum you would perform a number of swabs or take a number of samples equal to how many would be taken for one of your routine environmental verifications?

Don't straightjacket yourself, but point out that you have considered a variety of possibilities and have a general starting point they should already be comfortable with the standards of.