and worker safety. Furthermore, it is impor-
tant to clearly define and effectively commu-
nicate to employees the proper use and
maintenance of sanitation equipment.
Sanitation Study
A sanitation study should start with a
plant survey. A study team or individual spe-
cialist should identify cleaning procedures in
use (or procedures recommended for a new
operation), labor requirements, chemical
requirements, and utility costs. This informa-
tion is needed to determine recommended
cleaning procedures, cleaning and sanitizing
supplies, and cleaning equipment. The sur-
vey data should reflect required expenses
and projected annual savings from the pro-
posed sanitation system. A report of this
study should be distributed to key manage-
ment personnel.
Sanitation Equipment Implementation
After the appropriate equipment has
been recommended and acquired, the ven-
dor or a designated expert should supervise
the installation and startup of the new
operation. Personnel training should be
provided by the vendor or by the organiza-
tion responsible for manufacture of the sys-
tem. After startup, regular inspections and
reviews should be conducted jointly with
the organization performing the sanitation
study and a management team designated
by the food company. In addition to daily
inspections, reviews should be conducted
every 6 months. Both inspections and
reviews should be documented so that
records are available.
Reports should contain information
related to the effectiveness of the program,
periodic inventory data, and cleaning equip-
ment condition. Information related to
labor, cleaning compounds, sanitizers, and
maintenance costs provided by reports
should be compared with costs projected in
the sanitation study. This approach provides
a way to pinpoint trouble spots and to verify
that actual costs approximate projected
costs. This technique will contribute to sav-
ings of up to 50% when compared with an
unmonitored system.The HACCP Approach to Cleaning
The Hazard Analysis Critical Control
Point (HACCP) approach should be applied
when considering the evaluation of a clean-
ing system. A sanitation survey will permit
application of the HACCP concept. This sur-
vey should designate areas that require clean-
ing as highly critical, critical, or sub-critical
for physical and microbial contamination.
These areas can be grouped according to
required cleaning frequency as demanding
attention:- Continuously
- Every 2 hours (during each break
period) - Every 4 hours (during lunch break and
at the end of the shift) - Every 8 hours (end of shift)
- Daily
- Weekly
Assignment of different colors to repre-
sent specific zones of a processing plant, is
an economical way to create convenient
visual barriers between production func-
tions. This segregation minimizes migration
of materials-especially chemical and micro-
bial contaminants from one location to
another (Anon, 2004).
For verification purposes, the microbial
methods should be appropriate for the task.
Sampling should be accomplished where the
information will most accurately reflect the
cleaning effectiveness. Examples are:
Flow sheet samplingis the measurement of
microbial load on food samples collected
after each step in the preparation sequence.
When samples are collected from the first