3 replies to this topic

[ewalsh224]

I am reviewing our allergen control policies, and I've been watching our foot traffic. We have separate rooms for allergen and non-allergen production. There are foot baths at handwashing stations at each room and employee entrance. however, I see employees using hand trucks and fork lifts everywhere. there's no control of traffic, so a non-allergen worker will take a hand truck to get materials and will pass in front of the allergen production room. employees walk out and don't clean their footwear from here. the hand truck goes back thru and down a hallway into the non-allergen production room with the packaging. 

 

We have policies for nothing touching the floor, but I worry about now having allergens all over the facility floors. Aside from completely changing our traffic patterns, are there cleaners we can use on tires or floors to prevent allergen spread? We have sanitizing powder we could put down at production room entrances, but that doesn't affect allergens, right? I keep going around in circles trying to figure out what to do and can't find answers online anywhere. 

[G M]

Do you rework/recondition product that falls on the floor, or have a very dusty production environment?  Or is product that comes in contact with the floor destroyed?

 

Cross-contamination vs. cross-contact, do you respond to them differently?  The floor is presumably already considered insanitary ~ so what I'm getting at is that the floor having allergenic material on it may not change the outcome if anything touching it gets thrown away, or if a piece of product contact equipment falls it gets thoroughly washed regardless.

 

What is more important are the equipment and people who have the potential to contact product - are they getting segregated and cleaned as needed when they transition from one area to another?

[ewalsh224]

Thank you, that makes a lot of sense. We have protocol for washing things that fall on the floor and disposing product waste from the floor. There is ventilation and plastic flaps to protect the allergen room, where some ingredients are powders. But that's a good point to look at the trucks and people entering the area. We are currently working on getting better sanitation for trucks and better control of PPE like not leaving production with the coat and gloves still on. It's a policy, but it's another process to get employees to consistently follow it!

[jfrey123]

I think GM nailed it pretty well. 

 

The other thing I can suggest is having a dedicated pallet jack for your allergen room, using that pallet jack to move finished product to the exit of your allergen room to be picked up by a storage forklift to be moved out.  We do this in one of our meat facilities: storage forklifts only barely enter the top of the room to drop off raw material or barely enter the finished product exit to move finished goods to the finished cooler.  They go even a step farther to have a dedicated pallet jack for moving raw material pallets, the processing lines flow raw material down to packaging and palletizing of finished, and another dedicated pallet jack for moving finished pallets.  This keeps forklifts that truck around the plant out of your main production areas and minimizes the likelihood an auditor can be concerned that you're trucking allergens across your floors.