Hey Everyone!
We've run into a discrepancy between how this is being handled at two of our facilities - specifically allowance or not for personnel to wear wrist braces into food production areas. I wanted to see if anyone had experience or guidance they've used to either allow or deny the use of wrist braces in food production as reasonable accommodation.
We make refrigerated ready-to-eat foods as well as more shelf-stable baked goods in different areas of our operation. One facility does not allow wrist braces as the brace cannot be effectively cleaned, and as such the hands cannot be effectively cleaned.
The other facility currently does allow wrist braces as long as they're removed for hand washing.
The issue our FSQA team is trying to tackle - how can we ensure the brace themselves are clean (we can't) and even if they remove to wash hands, their hands become 'recontaminated' once they don the brace again. Operations is in the camp of 'they can just cover with a glove (or similar). However this seems, from a micro standpoint, to be an even more likely vector for contamination - especially in our higher-risk refrigerated RTE areas.
Hoping for any insight, as it's hard to find specifics for food manufacturing vs. retail.
Thanks in advance!
-CT