Four steps for better food safety and profits

In processing, proper food hygiene isn’t just important for keeping employees, customers, and consumers safe and happy, it’s also a major factor in making sure your operating costs are as low as possible. Food recalls can be incredibly costly for food processing companies. The average food recall in the US costs food processors an average of $10 million in direct costs, while long-term financial impacts can be even higher, due to the permanent loss of customers (21% of consumers will avoid purchasing from the manufacturer of a recalled product).* 

 

While there are various ways to reduce the costs of a food recall, the best way is to avoid a recall in the first place. With that in mind, here are four key steps to food safety improvements that will hopefully help your company avoid the risks and costs of a food recall. 

 

Building a new food processing facility presents the perfect opportunity to design your space with food safety as a priority. Starting from scratch, it’s easy to avoid the creation of hazards like pest hot spots, which can cause animal or insect contamination. You can also select materials that help prevent bacterial build-up and are easier to clean and maintain. You also have the chance to find the best layout for your equipment and organize how materials and products flow through your space, to minimize accidents. 

 

 

Most processors aren’t going to be building brand-new facilities, but that doesn’t mean you can’t re-design your existing space with safety in mind. This can be as simple as auditing for potential pest hot spots and sealing them off. Or it can involve a full restructure of the facility floor, moving equipment to reduce accidents and improve access for cleaning and maintenance. 

 

 

The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has produced its Food Safety Plan Builder, which is a great tool for helping you to consider how you can make food safety plans that are designed specifically to work for your existing facility.**

 

 

 

Tork can also support your business in creating hygienic facilities, with Tork Vision Cleaning, which uses real-time data to identify where there are cleaning service needs in your space. 

 

 

 

The active production process may receive the most attention when talking about safety, but the post-production/pre-shipping phase (often called storage and handling) is also full of potential health and safety issues. 

 

It’s always safer to thoroughly clean a container between uses, no matter what was in there before or what is being stored in there next. And it’s not just a matter of avoiding harmful bacteria or microbial contamination from products like raw meat. Cross-contamination may impact or even invalidate ingredient listings, not only causing you regulatory headaches but also various food safety hazards (particularly the introduction of allergens).  

 

 

Temperature control is one of the greatest food safety hazards faced while processing food, and perishable foods like fresh produce can be one of the most difficult challenges to manage. 

 

 

There are a lot of risks to consider when trying to avoid temperature dangers, including keeping cold foods at the proper temperatures, storing items for the right period of time, and avoiding cross-contamination between different food groups. 

 

 

Some of the ways to combat these issues include maintaining the right freezer temperatures and using food thermometers to track the internal temperatures of items. 

 

 

The FDA has published a food temperature storage guide, which lists the temperatures different items should be stored at, including hot foods.

 

 

Food storage solutions like raw meat vacuum packs and other airtight containers can be an excellent way to assist you in avoiding the spread of contamination between different types of food. This is one way to ensure raw ingredients don't spread or come into contact with foodborne bacteria. 

 

 

 

It’s important to remember, anything that touches the food you’re processing must be kept clean to avoid the transfer of dangerous bacteria that can cause illness. Every facility should have a set protocol and schedule for cleaning and disinfecting equipment. 

 

 

Proper hygiene for every employee is just as important as the hygiene of the surfaces and machines in your facility. For example, employees should always wash their hands, cover their hair and sores, and avoid working with food when sick. Tork can help support good hygiene in your workplace, with services including simple solutions like our Healthy Hands poster builder, which lets you build and promote long-lasting positive hygiene habits in your workplace. 

 

 

Tork can also help to increase efficiency in your facility by supplying you with hygiene and cleaning supplies to be made available at the point of use for employees, such as hand sanitizer refills and dispensers. 

 

 

 

As you’d expect, employees will need technical training and food safety education when they start their job to gain a practical understanding of their key tasks, like when and how to clean their machines as well as safe food handling.  

 

 

However, they’ll also need formal instruction on personal hygiene, from hand washing to what precautions to take when feeling ill at work. This training should take place when an employee is first hired and be updated and reinforced consistently afterwards. It’s important to ensure this training lines up with government guidance, as well as the actual processes used in your facility. When working with food, good hygiene is a major factor in looking after everyone from employees on the facility floor, to the consumers putting your products into their grocery shopping carts. Food safety training will be necessary for any colleagues who encounter food at any point while performing their role. 

 

 

While these basic steps offer suggestions for improving the safety and hygiene of your business, they are no substitute for following official government guidance, which is the best way to make sure you’re maximizing the safety and hygiene of your company. Please make sure your company is following all official guidance from relevant governing boards, such as the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture). They produce helpful guidance such as the HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) Planning Principles. HACCP planning helps assure food safety ‘from harvest to consumption’. 

 

Tork can assist you and your employees in improving hygiene and productivity at your facility with the Tork Clean Care manufacturing and food processing page. This page includes tools like a cleaning for industry checklist and product recommendations like disposable wiper and cleaning cloth refills. 

 

Perfect for large facilities, Tork PeakServe^® dispensers make use of the Continuous™ Hand Towel System to help you avoid runouts and increase efficiency with dispensing that’s faster than jet air drying. Schedule a free demo to see how Tork PeakServe can benefit your workplace.