Testing Air @ Point of Contact

Hello everyone, I am a newbie and this is my first post....   We are a small food production facility producing refrigerated and shelf stable salad dressing.  We had our first HACCP audit in February 2015 and it went well....But...the auditor stated that we need to be testing the air at Point of Contact....Checked with him again and he is not being clear...Our lab said there is a simple test using plates that we could use....Does anyone else know about this?  Are we testing the air in the room or testing the filtered air (.1 micron filtered air) coming out of the blower that clears any particulates out of the glass jars....Any advice would be most appreciated!!

Sharon

HACCP Coordinator

Normally, with reference to CAC/RCP 1-1969, Rev.4- 2003, clause 4.4.6, we do air checks “TPC”  &S almonella in the blast chiller or food preservation area and this area is restricted entry as well with the checklist in and out.

Thank you!!  And thank you for the reference material...I will check it out!!

Charles.C - Thank you!!  I will check out your reference materials!!

Wow…thanks a lot Charles…provided thread has got lots of info about air quality and MB checks….

Charles, yes the Auditor is looking for Microbial bio burden counts in your operation, mainly at the point of uses i.e. with Direct exposure to environmental air. you might use the settling plate procedure as listed above and some manufacturing sites are using equipment to filtrate Environmental air such as Minicap instruments.

Hope this helps

Alaa