Jewelry in non food contact areas

Hello,

Are employees allowed to wear jewelry in non-food contact areas, such as warehouses and boxing areas? Since they do not have direct contact with food, are there any exceptions to this rule?

Someone with more experience could correct me if I'm wrong, but generally speaking exceptions to GMPs should not be made for cases like this for multiple reasons. (I am making the assumption that the warehousing operations are in the same facility, it may differ for off-site warehousing)

1. Employees can and often do cross zones, allowing employees to not wear PPE or to wear jewelry in one zone where it may "not be required" will likely end up with GMP violations in food-contact zones.

2. Making exceptions to GMP rules for some employees will almost certainly lead to slippage in rule following by employees who absolutely must be following those rules for food safety purposes.

I do believe with sufficient effort you could allow warehouse employees to wear jewelry, but this effort would be much, much more strenuous on all involved than disallowing them from wearing jewelry. It's a can of worms that you can simply choose not to open, so why would you?

Hi Cheese89,

I prefer to apply a common consistent jewelry policy for all personnel working in food areas whether food contact or not.

Kind regards,

Tony

As with the above, I always like to have one rule.  It makes it vastly simpler to control and it's easy to understand with no vagaries.  You often find as well that H&S want to restrict jewellery too so that is helpful.