Practical provisions for complying with HACCP protocols.
Food safety is high on the agenda - with consumers, with governments and with the retail trade. Supermarkets, restaurants and catering suppliers do not want to run any risks and must be able to rely on the food industry to produce safe and wholesome food. Fortunately, the food industry in the Netherlands, as well as in the rest of Europe, takes hygiene directives and legislation very seriously. In order to keep the risks of contamination as low as possible, the HACCP guidelines is becoming increasingly easy because there are more possibilities for companies to monitor hygiene. The resources that can be deployed and the available control measures are diverse and constantly evolving and improving. With systems and products that ensure food safety, you stay in control and can guarentee the quality and safety of the food that you produce.
In this whitepaper, we will tell you more about the practical measures you can take within your company in the area of personal hygiene in order to be able to comply with HACCP guidelines. This white paper focuses on:
The HACCP guidelines are not a recent invention. NASA developed this system back in the 1960s in order to control the food consumed by astronauts.These Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points methodology were later introduced for the entire food industry. In the meantime, the food industry, has been required to draw up a HACCP plans. HACCP is subject to European legislation, which means that the law applies to all countries within the European Union.
The following points are included in a HACCP plan:
When a business wants to create safe food, personal hygiene is critical. In order to meet strict hygiene standards, nothing should be left to chance. You want to have and maintain control. There are various ways to take control: A well-equipped hygiene room forces the employees to comply with hygiene requirements. Of course it is important that this system fits your organisation in several ways. It must fit in the guidelines you are implementing, at the time and in the time frame reserved for personal hygiene, and the system must suit the premises and the various production areas. Diverse challenges can be tackled per element or merged into a plan that accurately identifies the moments, locations and needs. The objective is food safety, and the way in which this is to be achieved must be efficient, transparant and affordable.
An HACCP plan is set up by identifying what can go wrong and how this can be prevented at each stage in the production process. This is also the case with personal hygiene solutions. This aspect is often underestimated within the is one side of the story; employees need to be aware of their responsibility and how to bear it. On the other hand, a company needs applications such as:
In a well-configured location, these application provide accurate access control.
Customised solutions are offered in a hygiene lock. Employees reach the work floor via the lock or are forced to move from one room to another via a lock. Because the lock is the only passageway, the employees walk through a system containing the necessary disinfection procedures. Depending on the degree of coercion required to ensure personal hygiene, gates can be set to open only after an operation has been completed. Pictograms make it clear what the routing is and what is to be done. These pictograms are important because there are many foreign employees working in the food industry or new Dutch citizens who do not always have a good command of the language. Of course, this explanation is only relevant for new employees and when the hygiene lock has just been installed. For many people, everything will be clear very quickly.
The hygiene locks are made up of several elements. It may seem like a complicated construction, especially since we are also talking about the pictograms above. However, in practice, the employees go through the lock in this way. We can see that the lock promotes employees reach the production area more quickly.
Cleaning the hands is essential under HACCP. After a visit to the toilet, lunch or a smoking break, or touching a contaminated surface, the hands must be washed, dried and disinfected. The hand cleaning can be part of a hygiene lock or a stand-alone element. Soap, drying equipment and a dispenser with disinfectant are easy to integrate.
An automatic soap dispenser or dosing unit must be passed through when entering the workspace. The unit works with an entrance gate called a turnstile. When the hands are inserted into the cylinders of the unit, sensors are activated. The santiser or soap is automatically applied to the hands and only when this has been done is the turnstile released, allowing the worker to gain access to the next room.
The soles of shoes carry a lot of visible and invisible dirt and microorganisms into the workspaces. Cleaning and disinfecting the shoe soles is therefore an important part of personal hygiene under the HACCP guidelines. There are various types of cleaners available:
Sensors or push buttons activate the systems and clean shoes and boots effectively.
After cleaning, disinfection takes place. A special bath is used to sanitize shoes or boots. The bath is automatically refilled with disinfectant, so that the system does not have to stop and progress does not come under pressure. Automatic adjustment also ensures that the use of chemical products never exceeds what is strictly necessary.
Ensuring hygiene requires proper allocation of space for storage, drying space and space for the systems that clean and disinfect. Think of Lockers where we work clothes can be stored and where hairnets and gloves are kept in stock. A bench seat to sit on when putting on work shoes or boots and a drying rack for those shoes at the end of the working day is needed. Apron racks and apron washing facilities are also required in many food companies. All in all, these functions require space and, above all, a good layout of that space. Employees should not interfere with each other, especially when shifts are changing. Wahsbasins and other cleaning systems must also fit seamlessly into a logical flow. The prior monitoring of the flows of employees and the actions they perform at certain times in the context of HACCP provides insight. This insight helps to choose a logical layout in which hygiene is guaranteed and the process run effectively without taking up too much time.
Anyone who is consciously concerned about the future also thinks about sustainability. For us, sustainability starts with offering high-quality products and systems. In this way, your company can use our solutions for a long time. Some parts are subject to wear and tear, simply as a result of daily use. By ordering individual parts, such as brushes, couplings and taps, you can replace elements without having to quickly replace an entire product. Sustainability also has to do with the right applications; in other words, customisations. If the situation is well thought out, there is a greater chance that the solution will be future-proof and therefore sustainable.
Another factor is that our systems have low levels of power consumption. Because many products work with sensors, they can switch themselves off when not in use.
Demonstrable food safety in accordance with HACCP guidelines or a hygiene code, can only be achieved if it can be demonstrated in practice that products are handled in a responsible and safe manner. It must be demonstrated that all relevant conditions and process requirements from the Hygiene Code are met in practice. Adequate design, cleaning and disinfection of premises and equipment and personal hygiene are the basis for working hygienically.
In order to be able to implement food safety in practice, it is necessary to comply with HACCP guidelines. This means, in practice, aspects such as:
Do you want a no-obligation dicussion about practical provisions that you can implement within your company? Then schedule an appointment with me.
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