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PetBone

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Posted 22 September 2014 - 02:25 PM

Let me start off my saying that my background is in the RTE world and cleaning and sanitation are extremely different in this type of environment.

 

I have recently taken a new job with a company that manufactures pet treats through injection molding and extrusion. Due to the product and building they have elected to use dry sanitation as their cleaning process however this is extremely hard for me to wrap my head around as it seems to go against everything I have ever known as "food safety".

 

Wondering if there is anyone out that that may be doing any type of food/candy/pet food through injection molding and or extrusion that uses dry cleaning as their means of sanitation.

 

  • How often do you clean machinery parts that are food contact surfaces but extremely hard to reach/clean. Such as screws, barrels, augers etc?
  • How exactly do you truly define lots codes without a thorough cleaning in between each lot? This is probably the hardest thing for me to wrap my head around as it seems if all food surfaces are not cleaned, then you really have no lot segregation as you really have 1 never ending lot as each batch is touching the next batch unless a clean occurs?

 

Hoping that someone can help me out with some of these things as even the internet does not seem to be my friend in locating data that will help. 



fgjuadi

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Posted 22 September 2014 - 03:24 PM

I worked in as a Sanitation manager in extrusion - we cleaned everything past the ovens dry clean only - but the extruder itself & barrells, cutter box, etc was wet clean (hoppers were dry clean)

You might want to emphasize the amount of change over time that could be saved with a wet clean

 

Extrusion lots were defined  by clean out or purge  (well, we did clean out the entire line weekly, but from lot to lot only cleaned the things that needed it - cleaning time for one of our line could be 16 hours, with a wet clean!)

From lot to lot we would flush / purge / push the previous product out, no "cleaning" unless there is an allergen concern. The purge amount was defined by our equipment and a validation.

 

Things that will make dry cleaning the extruder (yikes, I can't imagine how long that would take) - quicker are compressed air, air guns, scrapers, etc.  If you have $ you can look at steam cleaning or dry ice machines.   We had quite a bit of trouble with employees hiding airguns all about the mezzanines - it was a war zone with guns stashed every where.  Buhler / Clextral / Evolum will come out to look for you sometimes if you're having a hard time with equipment.  And your chemical rep might be able to help you.  Probably wont' get much support from them if your entire facility is dry clean (cant imagine that takes up too many chemicals)


Edited by magenta_majors, 22 September 2014 - 03:25 PM.

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ChocolatesMyGame

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Posted 08 October 2014 - 07:23 PM

Dry cleaning is very common in chocolate manufacturing.  The whole point is to not introduce water which is needed for Salmonella to grow.  The more water you introduce, the more risk you actually run of creating a niche for bacteria (I'm assuming it's a similar situation with pet treats, except with meat?).  We defined lots by shift production time frames.  If a recall happened you will have to do a trace forward to determine how much product produced after the affected lot was also affected.  We determined an amount of product that would need to be run through systems to "flush" out the affected lot if the system was not batched with a cleaning in between.  If we couldn't successfully do that, we would clean everything at the time of the recall notice and hold everything in between the affected lot and the clean.  It's a pain, but also a reason that CCPs and quality suppliers become so important at preventing a recall.





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