8 replies to this topic

[bzefella]

Greetings Mentors

 

Hope this new year has met everyone in good health.

 

Mentors, from your experiences, how do you handle a situation where a facility outright refuses to launder its process garments at the facility or contracted and allows line workers to take them home and launder themselves? 

 

Awaiting your guidance.

 

Regards

[MDaleDDF]

I would imagine this will take care of itself when an auditor looks at it.   They'll write you up, and the facility will have no choice but to do it.    What scheme are you?

The only way out would be to maybe do a risk assessment and show why it's not a risk?   Cover proper laundering in your GMP training?   Swab employee clothes quarterly and build a body of evidence it's not an issue?  

I dunno.   We just took the easy road and have a company launder all our uniforms....

[jfrey123]

Hard effing nope out of me.  I'm with MDale, next formal audit should help boot this ridiculous policy.  If you want to try and prove the point ahead of time, buy a lint roller and wait near the production entrance when employees start for that day.  Run the lint roller across 10 employees, use a separate pull off for each one, and show upper management the amount of dirt and pet hair you recover.  If they're home laundering their smocks, there's no point in having smocks vs their regular street clothes.  

 

God, this concept gets worse as I type it.  How are employees transporting a week's worth of smocks to and from work?  Floor of their car trunks?  Duffle bag next to their peanut trail mix for lunch?  Used plastic grocery bags?  Oooo, if it's plastic bags, swab the bags for everything you can think of...  Or dear God, are employees wearing their uniforms on their way into work every day?  Riding the bus that's never been cleaned while wearing them?

[kingstudruler1]

My friend from Belize!

 

 

I guess I agree with the others.  I think my disclaimer would be the risk.   If there is no risk form the clothes such as an entirely enclosed operation, etc, I might not have a large issue with it.   

[Setanta]

I would avoid this by any means you can,  Nothing good will come of it.

[SQFconsultant]

Wait until you get a complaint for having dog hair in your food products - that should get the owners to make a change.

 

Years back I was doing a 3rd part audit for a food chain and had just sat down to review documents and asked for their trending report and associated complaints... 4 out of 7 complaints had to do with hair in the food.

 

Long story short - cause: having the employees take their uniforms home for laundering by a bunch of employees that had dogs at home.

 

This place had dog hair all over - after the audit the owners bought the equipment and took it all in house.

 

Too bad they waited until they lost customers and this account that I did the audit for - they got it back, but they lost over a million in the meantime. 

[G M]

No.  So many reasons, no.

 

I cannot imagine the amount of money saved on laundering would ever come close to offsetting the cost of validation and verification testing needed to maintain a system like this.

[MOHAMMED ZAMEERUDDIN]

Allowing workers to take process garments home is a very risky decisions.

[bzefella]

Good Day Mentors

 

Thank you all so much for taking time out of your valuable day to share your thought on my question.

 

MDALEDDF  - Only HACCP at this point.

 

Can anyone recommend how to accomplish "validation and verification testing needed to maintain a system like this.(GM)"?

 

Hi Kingstudruler1 -- nice and warm here.

 

Regards