Running a ready to cook product in High care room
Hello
We are a company shipping produce as whole case in/out, repacking fresh produce and cutting, slicing, peeling, packaging vegetables.
I was wondering if anyone could assist with this query: Can we run untreated onions as agreed upon with a customer in our high Care room? If so, what would be he implications regarding controls to be applied prior or after running non-treated product?
The diced onions would be run as ready to cook/further processing and would not go through the anti-microbial treatment step.
Thanks
Jean-C.
Sounds like you are risking the safety of your ready to eat vegetables with an unwashed onion??? If you conduct your risk assessments for the new risks associated with unwashed onions in your storage and processing areas and address the risks, then you should be able to run them.
I would think you would handle them at the end of the day after your RTE products. Otherwise you would have to do a full wash/sanitization step between the products.
Here's the IFSQN training related to High Care areas:
Maybe it has something helpful for you.
This article is a good reminder that the onions should not be in the room at the same time as other products because they could introduce contamination not found in other products. The airborne particles and your employees PPE could be the vessel for cross-contamination. You will have to make sure that any PPE used during the onion production is changed out and sanitized before use with any other products. You probably will need to re-validate all your cleaning and sanitation methods.
Thanks to you both for your replies
Even washed onions are a huge source of bacterial contamination, I've certainly had issues with Listeria monocytogenes on them before.
I would think less about your customer being ok about it and more about what risk it brings to your high care area. High care is there to reduce the risk of pathogenic bacteria within the environment. So as soon as you bring in something which is very likely to contain pathogens, that breaks the barrier and increases risks to products made within it.
Do you use other (washed) raw onions in this area? What is the purpose of not washing them? Could you assemble the product in low risk instead?
That was the customer decision since the onions will be cooked afterwards. Maybe they could be made in low-risk area.
Thanks for your answer.