[Special Report: Food Plant Hygiene] Food Surface Hygiene — from Visual to Verified

New technologies have made hygiene monitoring quicker and simpler, but the foundation of effective plant hygiene still follows basic GMPs and HACCP principles: understanding your practices and potential hazards; taking action to stay within acceptable limits; training personnel; documenting all activity; then regularly assessing or auditing for compliance.

“It’s really about GMPs in a food plant to maintain a clean environment,” said Paul Miller, vice president and general manager of Nilfisk. And plant hygiene includes everything from people to rodents — following the regulations and principles that identify potential problem areas (or Critical Control Points), then establishing systems to monitor them.

“Hygiene is a very general term for having good cleaning practices in place, minimizing the opportunity for cross contamination through foreign objects, chemical contamination or microorganisms and preserving a good environment,” said Martin Easter, Ph.D., microbial biochemist and general manager, Hygiena  International. This preservation is evident in the origination of the word “hygiene,” he explains. In ancient Greece, Hygiea was the goddess of health — a young, beautiful maiden, who was the daughter of Asklepios, the god of healing. In contrast to her father who treated people who were already ill, Hygiea’s focus was on how to stay healthy and beautiful.

“GMPs on hygiene are fundamental prerequisites of HACCP. It’s not possible to do HACCP until you have a clean facility,” Easter said. As stated in a callout on a paper he wrote on Hygiene Monitoring in Support of Food Safety, “Good Hygienic Practices are an essential to ensure food safety. They are required by law under national and international Food Hygiene Regulations and are frequently considered as prerequisites to food safety systems based on Hazard Analysis such as HACCP.” And as with all HACCP standards, monitoring and documentation is a critical component.

MONITORING THROUGH TESTS. The purpose of monitoring is to demonstrate that the cleaning process was effective, so the equipment and food surfaces are safe for the next production. “Historically the only way of monitoring was to measure microorganisms on surfaces or product,” Easter said, a process which generally took three to four days, making it of limited use, he adds, “because the product could be out the door and already eaten.”

Thus hygiene monitoring often became very much a visual thing. For example, he said, every quarter a plant would shut down for cleaning, then a supervisor would walk through and say it looks clean. “If it looks clean, it is clean,” he said was the general thinking. They may go a next step and swab some areas, but at $20 to $30 per test, this was expensive and time consuming, and  often were an indirect measure of hygiene.

Today plants have same-shift and real-time options for testing which also have a wider range of measurement. Because the main objective of cleaning is to remove product debris and organic matter, the ideal test for efficacy is the one that measures that very thing. “The way to know you’ve done a good job of cleaning to remove organic matter is an organic matter test,” Easter said.

Modern rapid tests can physically measure small amounts of organic matter and provide instant results, which allows recleaning, if needed, prior to starting production. “This gives you the opportunity for immediate corrective action,” he said.

There are two basic principles used on today’s rapid tests, as described in Easter’s hygiene monitoring paper:

• ATP bioluminescence testing — The detection of ATP by bioluminescence testing has been used since the 1980s to detect microbes in foods and monitor hygiene of food-contact surfaces. Almost all organic matter contains ATP, thus it is present in most foods in large amounts. In short, the theory behind ATP testing to ensure that a plant does not have organic residue on a surface off of which microbes can be living. This then ensures that sanitizers will work correctly, eliminating the chance for microbial contamination from this source. In addition, because a correlation has been shown between surface cleanliness and plate counts, ATP testing is accepted for hygiene monitoring by industry, retailer and regulatory agencies. Originally this testing involved large bench-top instruments and expensive processes for analysis. But then technology evolved to portable units that could be taken into the production area, and computerization, which enabled further data integration, manipulation, record keeping and trend analysis. Today, all-in-one systems are available which have increased ATP test convenience, ease of use and rapid, cost-effective analysis.
• Color hygiene testing — Color testing, available through several technologies, is a simple process through which results are visible to the naked eye, do not require instrumentation and are available in one to ten minutes. Although these tests generally are less sensitive than ATP testing, they provide a simple, semi-quantitative hygiene test which can detect ATP, NADPH, protein or simple sugars. Some provide results of a single color change to indicate contamination; others have a range of color changes to further indicate level of contamination. The most common commercially available color tests are those for protein and simple sugars.

Easter estimates that ATP testing is used by about 40 percent of U.S. food processors, and probably 80 percent of the top 100 companies in the industry. But as the cost continues to decline and the industry begins to realize this, the use of ATP testing is seeing dramatic growth, he said.

“Now that testing is more affordable, more companies can get into it and there’s no reason for them not to get into it,” Easter said.

MONITORING THROUGH USAGE. Because a plant’s overall hygiene also is related to that of its employees, monitoring of employee hygiene and their hygienic practices is critical. But a plant needs to set standards for auditing of this and ensure these fit the plant’s requirements.

Dan McElroy, market development manager for GoJo Food Processing, gives the example of soap usage in handwashing. “Typically if soap usage goes up, the purchasing agent sees that as a negative,” he said. But if it is determined by an audit that the amount of soap is applicable for the number of employees, times of required washing, etc., he said, “You should be dancing on the tables saying ‘Yahoo, it’s working!’”

And, in fact, McElroy adds, the whole assessment can be turned around to the positive with training and auditing to place product where it will be used; ensure that dispensers are in proper working order; train employees on how, why and when handwashing is required; and reinforce this regularly, with consideration for diversity of culture and language.

MONITORING THROUGH TRACKING. In addition to testing, a critical component of monitoring is the recording of test results and procedures for tracking. “As companies install more advance ERP and computer systems that integrate their quality control and sanitation systems in order to provide better traceability, companies providing plant hygiene systems must make sure their product can integrate into these systems,” said Easter.  This allows companies to quickly recognize problem areas and make needed improvements.

Such tracking reduces the chance of mistakes in a plant and minimizes potential damage to the product and the brand, Easter said, explaining that, in a worst-case scenario of a recall, this enables a plant to “stand up and defend your corner of the due diligence.” Integrating the information with standard product tracking will not only show when the product was processed, but the hygienic practices and conditions of that day and shift. “It becomes, if you like, your due diligence defense.” You can stand up in court and say, “Yes, we did everything possible. There is nothing else we could have done” — and be able to prove it through the tracking information.

If you look at recent recalls, there is one very obvious factor, McElroy said. “If you have a good program around a certain issue, it quickly allows you to take that off the table.” When you are determining the cause of an incidence of cross contamination, it can be a great relief and timesavings to be able to take hygiene out of the picture as a potential factor. “It seems to be a small issue now, but in a situation like that, you’re scrutinizing everything,” McElroy said.

Although always a potential issue in any food processing, “no one likes to think about (recalls), because no one wants it to happen to them,” Easter said. But even not accounting for recalls, although most certainly in an effort to avoid them, many plants are being required by their customers to have comprehensive hygiene monitoring as part of their quality assurance program, including validation and documentation.

This becomes even more critical with today’s trend toward contract manufacturing, whereby a company puts its brand name on a product manufactured by another. Because of this, it is essential for plants to not only have a supplier QA program, but to have a tool to monitor and measure that safety. “When it comes to ATP, we are seeing more contract manufacturers call us up because their client is requiring it,” Easter said.

Lisa Lupo is staff editor of QA magazine.