7 replies to this topic

[rmoriarty]

I recently started at a new company where one of the value added comments from their last SQF audit was to perform a sanitation validation for employees not wearing gloves while handling food. Our current practitioner said that the auditor last year wanted us to validate this by swabbing hands of employees before and after handwashing, but this seems strange to me so I was wondering if anyone has performed similar validations?

 

For reference we are a dried pasta manufacturer and employees will touch the pasta throughout the production process (before and after drying). We do not perform a kill step as the consumer must boil the pasta prior to consumption.

 

TIA

[Tony-C]

Hi rmoriarty,

 

 

Welcome to the IFSQN forums.

 

Understand that your products are being boiled by the customer but since your employees are handling the products you don’t want to add unnecessary contamination to the product which may be handled by the customer prior to cooking.

 

In addition, the SQF Code does require personnel to have clean hands:

11.3.2 Handwashing

11.3.2.1 All personnel shall have clean hands … etc.

 

A few hand swabs now and again would not hurt to monitor that handwashing is being carried out and is effective. So, bit of monitoring/verification. Not validation.

 

Kind regards,

 

Tony

Edited by Tony-C, 18 July 2025 - 03:32 AM.

[Scampi]

Better yet, swab gloves at end of shift and compare that to bare hands!

 

Gloves   eeeeew   (a hill I'm willing to die on)

[Setanta]

If your compnay wants to sell to Costco, they mandate the use of gloves. 

[Scampi]

If your compnay wants to sell to Costco, they mandate the use of gloves. 

Unless you never touch the product

We sell to Costco and have an exemption

[Setanta]

Unless you never touch the product

We sell to Costco and have an exemption

 

 

Not the case for the OP. 

[rmoriarty]

Thank you all for the insight! I think that setting up a quarterly or annual verification / monitoring program may be the best way to go about this. If anyone has performed similar studies and has advice on designs I'd love the info!

[kconf]

Gloves must if contacting food. You don't want skin shedding, debris, nails peeling. etc. to go in your product. You can still prove microbiologically free by swab testing, but it does not mean no foreign material is present.