[Special Report: Food Plant Hygiene] Establishing a Hygiene Program

Most industry people would agree that employee hygiene is critical to food safety, but if asked to define employee hygiene and explain why it is so important, there would be quite a bit more floundering in the response. Can you define what — besides handwashing — constitutes employee hygiene? Or just as importantly, can your employees?

“There is nothing that drives me more than employee hygiene,” said Dan McElroy, market development director of GoJo Food Processing. “It is easily overlooked because it is assumed that everyone understands what it is and how to manage a program based on employee hygiene.”

As defined by the American Heritage Dictionary, hygiene, in its purest form, is “conditions and practices that serve to promote or preserve health” — a very broad definition for an industry rooted in the promotion and preservation of health through food safety. So when applied to employees, hygiene would be anything that has to do directly with the employees, themselves, which affects health and cleanliness, thereby the resulting food safety.

Development of a hygiene program is, therefore, important to both set the standards of the plant and help employees understand the intricacies of hygiene. A program should involve planning for the big picture — what hygiene is most important in your plant and what is required of employees — and answer:

• How is the information to be disseminated to employees; what training and re-training will be required?
• How is diversity handled; various cultures have different understandings and expectations of hygiene; how do you relate to cultures which differ from your standards? In addition, do you account for the primary language of all employees?
• How will you handle skin problems and employee resistance because of this?
• How will you manage and monitor compliance?

Probably the most critical aspect of hygiene in a plant is training. “Training should be the cornerstone of a solid hygiene program,” McElroy said. This would include the why, how and when of hygiene requirements.

Jan Eudy, corporate Quality Assurance Manager for Cintas, agrees. “Whatever your protocol is (washing hands, cleaning shoes, changing into the plant uniform), train on the whole program.” And training should not just be for new employees; rather the protocol and general good habits should constantly be reinforced throughout the plant. “It’s easy to get lazy and go back to poor habits,” she said. Then plant managers need to monitor compliance and assess results to ensure that employees are following the program and keeping your product safe.

For example, a standard for hand washing should be that employees do so every time they leave or return to a food-processing activity, and the training should explain why this is important. Armed with this knowledge, the employee can then take it the next step to determine the hygiene need for each situation, asking himself, “Is this a complete wash or a refresh and sanitizing that will put me back into that state?” with the answer determined by the specifications of the hand washing requirements of the plant’s hygiene program. “That’s where management planning is key,” McElroy said.

Too often, he adds, employee hygiene is managed by the QA manager, but ends up in the hands of purchasing. “To them, soap is soap,” and unless the QA manager explains why a more costly option is required, many purchasing agents will opt for a less expensive alternative. For this reason, hygiene, just as all aspects of your food safety program, needs to be understand and maintained by all personnel in the plant.

McElroy and Eudy agree that hygiene should be considered a CCP and managed, trained, reviewed and audited as would be any other CCP in your HACCP plan. “It probably better be, just like sanitizing the equipment is,” Eudy said. “Employee hygiene is a critical component of all food processing.” 

Lisa Lupo is staff editor of QA magazine.