Essential Tips for Effective Sanitation

For microbiologist Jeff Kornacki, PhD, danger lurks around the corner in every restaurant and supermarket he visits. The food safety consultant admits that he eats at fast food restaurants, but with some trepidation. And as much as he tries to avoid looking at the kitchen as he waits in line, he says he can’t help himself. “I’ve seen people making sandwiches reach into one set of ingredients and then another—olives, lettuce, pickles, and they’re handling it all,” says the head of Kornacki Microbiology Solutions Inc. in McFarland, Wis. “They have plastic over their hands and are wiping off counters with a wet cloth that has been around all morning. And if they don’t change their gloves, they’ve transferred a vast population of microbes from the cloth onto the food.

The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) aims to ensure the U.S. food supply is safe by shifting the focus from responding to contamination to preventing it. The FDA recently proposed two major rules for the Act regarding preventive controls in human food and produce safety. While the Act focuses on farms and processors, its benefit filters down to restaurants and supermarkets in the form of potentially improving the safety of meat and other foodstuffs moving through the food chain, says Sarah Klein, senior staff attorney for the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s Food Safety Program. Other standards also are being upgraded, including the American National Standard for Bakery Equipment Sanitation Requirements .

Know your problem areas before you make changes

Tackling your sanitation needs is not always an easy feat. The best way to approach improving sanitation in your plant is to conduct a detailed study of the current processes to define the areas that need work. This may include equipment effectiveness, supervisory staff and materials used.

Many times, the root cause of sanitation problems can get overlooked or not properly addressed, because the time and detailed study of the current process are not closely examined. Keep in mind that you may have to hire outside help to get a rigorous study properly completed. It is not unusual to discover at least 30 percent of non-valued time within the existing process, mainly due to poor planning, poor coordination or the use of overly cumbersome methods.

Once you pinpoint the problem areas, the real fun can begin. An effective study will help you determine your goals and plans to streamline your operation and create a standardized method for running everything smoothly.

Personal Hygiene

Most foodborne illnesses are caused by bacteria or other microorganisms spread by people who handle food, according to a report called “Serving it Safe” from the National Food Service Management Institute and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The report also noted that every action in food service could potentially impact food safety during purchasing, storing, preparing, holding, serving, or cleaning.

Perhaps the most basic step toward safe food is teaching restaurant, supermarket, and other food-handling staff the importance of basic hygiene. That includes washing their hands and exposed arms frequently and at key times in food handling, such as when they switch from touching raw to cooked food. Covering cuts also is critical.

Make sanitation a priority, not an option

When sanitation gets put on the back burner, it often ends up in flames. It is so easy to ignore sanitation issues until it is too late to do anything but clean up a huge, avoidable mess. A crucial component of successful sanitation practices is having a management mind set. Sanitation is a critical part of the business and must be managed, controlled and executed with the same level of attention to that of the production and maintenance operations.

Instead of making sanitation a troublesome necessity, turn it into a competitive advantage by focusing on overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). Your operation will see an increase in capacity without investment or additional resources, and it does not need to be overly difficult or expensive.

The Importance of Mosquito Prevention

As we all know that mosquito can cause many diseases, so it is important for food industries to have s mosquito trap to fight mosquito.

The best way to prevent getting sick is to protect your customers and employees from mosquito bites with QM mosquito trap. QM mosquito killers are based on the theory that mosquitoes are attracted to heat, co2 and many other factors. So to make sure they are following the right scent, mosquitoes will start by tracing the co2 scent back to its origin. Once close enough the mosquito will start tracking the heat and finally once everything is correct they will prey for the target and thus setting our trap in motion. Like MBOX electric mosquito killer that is designed from the bottom up and is assembled without any screws; with just a gentle twist the MBOX mosquito trap can be disassembled to remove any unwanted ‘dead mosquitoes’. Get more information from http://mbox-qm.com