Laundry Service and Smocks for Low-Risk Snack Facility

 Hello everyone,

 My BRC auditor told us that by next year we had to implement a change on our uniform policy.

 We are a snack factory and we provide uniform for employee and they laundry it at home.

 My question is: Do we need to provide a laundry service to validate cleaning? Do we need to go away from uniforms to smocks? 

 How is the issue treated at your plant? 

 We are a low risk / care facility and like I said we produce chips.

 Thank you

Home laundering is a no-go these days.  Can't guarantee the employees actually wash the uniforms, can't guarantee they won't wash and fold and set them somewhere that allows recontamination, etc.  Professional laundry services are hip to the needs of food manufacturers these days, and most of them can provide you a copy of a HACCP flow and FSP to demonstrate how they keep your uniforms safe for your facility.  Includes proof of allergen cleanliness, the whole shebang.

Uniforms are problematic IMO: employees have to change out of them to take their breaks or go outside the facility, otherwise you're risking cross contamination being brought into your production area.  Smocks are what I see most common and what we use in all of my current facilities.  They can be easily hung for breaks or anytime an employee leaves the production area, they can be quickly changed for clean if they become soiled, they're available when non-production employees need to enter your production area, more and more reasons can be given.

Smocks laundered by a professional service and delivered back pre-hunt with plastic wrap around them is the low effort way to satisfy the clothing requirements of GFSI.

...

 My question is: Do we need to provide a laundry service to validate cleaning? Do we need to go away from uniforms to smocks? 

 ...

It would be extremely hard to validate something you can't monitor -- so unless you're spending a silly amount on a testing program to verify the cleaning being done by your employees, let's just say distributed at-home sanitation of uniforms is not a practical option.

Whether you go with an in-house or service provider laundry service, it needs to be centralized to be verified and validated for practical and economic reasons.

We have a variety of facilities, and most of them are using a laundry service provider.  One large facility is in a very rural location and uses in-house laundry.  All of them use smocks, and incorporate personal garment standards into their GMPs.

Hi Carolinasnyder10,

:welcome:

Welcome to the IFSQN forums.

This is indeed a Non-Compliance against BRCGS Food Clause 7.4.3:

‘Protective clothing shall be laundered by an approved contracted or in-house laundry using defined criteria to validate the effectiveness of the laundering process. The laundry must operate procedures which ensure:

Adequate segregation between dirty and cleaned clothes

Affective cleaning of the protective clothing

Cleaned clothes are supplied protected from contamination until use (e.g. by the use of covers or bags).’

‘Washing of protective clothing by the employee is exceptional but shall be acceptable where:

The protective clothing is not used for product safety purposes; for example, it is used to protect the employee from the products handled

and

The protective clothing is worn in enclosed product or low-risk areas only.’

I would look for a contracted laundry that has experience in supplying food manufacturers.

Kind regards,

Tony