Cold Chain Practices
People can carry pathogens on their skin, in their hair, on their hands and in their digestive system or respiratory tract. Infected food workers who handle fresh produce and have poor personal hygiene are an important cause of food contamination and foodborne illness outbreaks.
Under current good manufacturing practices, everyone working in direct contact with food, food contact services, and food packaging materials, should use good hygienic practices to protect against contamination of the food.
Personal hygiene begins at home, this includes daily bathing, washing hair, and wearing clean clothes. Personal hygiene continues at the plant by wearing clean smocks, hairnets, and clean gloves were appropriate.
Human hands are used for more than just handling fresh produce, they are used to greet others, to comb hair, to eat, to scratch, to handle unsanitary objects, and when using the toilet. During these activities, hands may become contaminated with harmful microorganisms and in some cases harmful chemical substances. These microorganisms or chemicals can be transferred to produce or produce contact surfaces if hands are not washed thoroughly.
When to wash your hands
Employees should know when and how to properly wash their hands. Fingernails should be trimmed and maintained so that hand-washing will effectively remove soil from under and around them. Polished or painted fingernails should be adequately cleaned and gloves should be worn.
Hands should always be washed:
Before food preparation
After touching human body parts
After using the toilet
After coughing, sneezing, using a handkerchief or tissue
After using tobacco, eating or drinking
After taking out the garbage
After handling cleaning chemicals
After picking up dropped items
After caring for or touching animals
Before returning to the workstation (regardless of the reason for leaving)
How to properly wash your hands
Improper hand-washing is as dangerous as no hand-washing at all, thorough handwashing is important in preventing illness. Employees should follow these steps to properly wash hands:
Wet hands with warm running water.
Apply a liberal amount of soap to the hands.
The surface of the hands, wrists, and forearms should be scrubbed and rubbed vigorously for at least 20 seconds.
The areas in between the fingers, under nails, and forearms should also be scrubbed and rubbed.
Particular attention should be paid to washing the fingertips. Many microorganisms can be removed by friction alone.
Hands should be rinsed under clean warm running water.
Hands should be dried with a clean disposable towel.
Employees
Employees come in contact with food products many times during processing and should be trained in safe food handling. This is because humans are often the vectors involved in the spread of disease, like the common cold or even foodborne illness.
Employees may transfer foodborne illness-causing microorganisms to processed food at various points in processing operations, such as:
• Receiving ingredients
• Material warehousing and cold storage
• Unloading ingredients from delivery or storage containers
• Preparing product for machine processing
• Mixing, blending, or processing
• Packaging
• Weighing
• Boxing
• Warehousing finished products.
Good Management Practices (GMPs) also emphasise the need for adequate employee training in proper food handling, hand washing, and food protection. Strict adherence to GMP is important, and employees should have the knowledge and understanding to carry out their responsibilities properly. Training should cover the dangers of insanitary practices and poor personal cleanliness, and how these practices can lead to consumer and employee illnesses. Adequate training of employees is everyone’s responsibility and needs to be assigned to competent supervisory personnel.
GMP and good employee hygiene practices should be followed each step of the way by everyone including forklift operators, management, and visitors to the plant to reduce the chances of spreading foodborne illnesses.
Health & Hygiene Training
Managers play a very important role in helping their employees prevent contamination of food products such as providing health and hygiene training programs for employees. Managers should provide a clear understanding of the proper personal hygiene practices and the company's policies regarding illness and other health conditions such as infected wounds that could contaminate products. Policies should provide reassurance that employees will not lose their jobs if they report an illness or a communicable disease.
Management should continually emphasise how important it is for employees to maintain a high level of cleanliness and good health and should serve as role models for good work habits and acceptable hygienic practices. They should also ensure that visitors are required to follow the same hygienic practices as employees and have policies in place that prevent unauthorised personnel from being in food processing areas.
Adequate training is very important and should be documented. Once employees understand what is expected of them, effective supervision of employee practices in food processing areas should be used to ensure that employees follow proper procedures. Training should be reviewed whenever incorrect practices are observed.
Employees are more likely to follow good personal hygiene practices when facilities and supplies are adequate. Management is responsible for providing, properly located, and maintained facilities and supplies that will allow employees to adhere to personal hygiene requirements.
Management should provide and maintain the following facilities:
Dressing and changing rooms that are adequate and properly maintained.
Laundry or Uniformed services as necessary.
Designated employee areas for breaks where eating and drinking are allowed.
Strategically placed and well-stocked hand-washing facilities throughout the production area.
Education and Training programs should be designed to help employees in fresh processing understand what is expected of them and why it's important. Company expectations for proper hygiene and handwashing procedures should be clearly defined in pre-employment and periodic training programs.
New employees should receive training prior to beginning employment, even if it takes considerable time and effort. Principles of personal hygiene and sanitation should be periodically reviewed with all employees. Prominently placed signs or posters are a good reminder.
Clothing worn by employees and food processing in production areas should be kept clean, as dirty and soiled clothes can be a source of contamination of food products. Clean uniforms, aprons, or other outer garments that are put on after the employee gets to work can help to minimise contamination from sources outside the processing facility.
Clothing, food for meals, snacks, or other personal belongings should be stored in lockers or breakroom areas that are located away from processing areas or areas where equipment or utensils are washed.
Hair in food can be a source of both microbiological and physical contamination. Food workers should be encouraged to keep their hair clean and to wear appropriate hair and/or beard restraints at all times in food processing areas to prevent contamination of the finished products.
Under current GMPs rings, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, watches, and other body part ornaments should not be worn because they can harbour microorganism that can cause foodborne illness. Jewellery can also fall into food causing a physical hazard. All jewellery should be removed prior to entering the processing facility with the exception of plain wedding bands.
Employees should eat food, chew gum, drink beverages, or use tobacco only in designated areas away from food, food packaging materials, equipment, utensils, and washing areas. Healthy people can frequently harbour pathogens in their mouth and respiratory tract. Pathogens can move to employees' hands and then to the food products that they are processing when hand to mouth contact occurs. Hands should be washed every time employees return to work.
Perspiration may contaminate the food, food contact surfaces, hands, and clothing. Wiping a sweaty brow with a cloth or hand introduces potential contamination. Ideally, the processing facility should be maintained at cool temperatures to minimise perspiration.
Diarrhoea or open lesions are also a source of pathogens. Any employee with symptoms associated with an acute gastrointestinal illness such as vomiting, diarrhoea, fever, or jaundice, should be prohibited from working with food. Company policy should encourage employees to report illnesses to their supervisor so that the employee may be reassigned to a job that does not require contact with food.
Employees diagnosed with Salmonella, Shigella, E. Coli, or Hepatitis A should not perform jobs that require contact with food or food contact surfaces until a doctor determines that they are disease-free. All of these diseases are easily transferred to foods and are considered severe health hazards.
Exposed areas of arms, wrists, and forearms that contain wounds should be completely covered by a dry, tight-fitting impermeable bandage. Cuts or burns on the food worker's hands should be thoroughly bandaged and covered with a clean glove.
Glove usage
Food workers should minimise hand contact with fresh produce, using suitable utensils such as tongs, spatulas, or single-use gloves where possible. Single-use gloves are frequently used to avoid direct hand contact but gloves may create a false sense of security for fresh food workers. Dirty gloves like dirty hands can contaminate products.
Single-use gloves should never be washed, they should always be thrown away when they need to be changed and employees should put on fresh gloves only after thoroughly washing their hands. Employees should use sanitiser hand dips frequently to reduce recontamination while on the processing line, but not to replace hand washing.
Employees should understand the importance of maintaining clean gloves. Single-use gloves should be changed after any activity that may contaminate them, in other words, single-use gloves should be changed as often as needed and for the same reasons, an employee would wash their bare hands.
If non-disposable gloves such as rubber gloves are used in the facility, they should be washed as frequently as bare hands. Hands should be washed before and after putting on non-disposable gloves.
Restrooms & Sanitation
Conveniently located and properly equipped hand-washing facilities are one key to getting employees to wash their hands. Hand-washing stations should be located in or adjacent to restrooms and should also be located in food processing areas. Hand-washing stations should be clean and well-maintained and should not be used for purposes other than hand-washing. Hand-washing stations should be equipped with hot and cold running water under pressure, a supply of soap and disposable single-use towels. Warm water is recommended because cold water does not remove oils on the hands that may harbour microorganisms.
Individual disposable towels are more sanitary than cloth towels for drying hands and are the preferred hand drying devices. Adequate waste containers should be supplied for used towels. Hand or glove dips may also be considered. Sanitisers designed for this purpose can be obtained from sanitation supply companies and should be prepared according to the label instructions.
The sanitising solution should be monitored frequently to ensure the proper concentration is maintained. Hand or glove dips are only appropriate for use with clean hands or clean gloves; these dips are not a substitute for proper handwashing.
Boot dips are sometimes used to sanitise the bottom of boots or shoes when an employee moves from one part of the facility to another. When properly maintained, boot dips can reduce the spread of microorganisms throughout a facility, however, the sanitising solution in boot dips can easily become depleted. The sanitiser concentration should be tested frequently to ensure effectiveness.
Toilet facilities are required for all employees. Employee restrooms should be conveniently located and accessible to employees during all hours of operation. Smocks and gloves should be left in the designated processing area and not worn into restrooms or break rooms. Toilet facilities near work areas promote good personal hygiene, reduce lost productivity, and permit closer supervision of employees.
Materials used in the construction of toilet rooms and toilet fixtures should be durable and easily cleanable. The floors, walls, and fixtures in toilet areas should be cleaned and well-maintained. Toilet tissue and disposable paper towels should be supplied along with easy to clean containers for waste materials.
Automatically actuated toilet flushing systems and sinks will reduce the possibility of contamination of clean hands prior to leaving the facilities. Poor sanitation in toilet areas can spread disease, dirty toilet facilities also have a negative effect on the attitudes and work habits of the employees. These areas should be included in the routine cleaning program to assure that they are kept clean and in good repair. Food or food packaging materials should never be stored in restroom areas.
In summary fresh produce operations should be protected from contamination with microorganisms or foreign substances. Achieving this goal requires a healthy, clean, and properly trained workforce that understands the importance of proper handwashing techniques and other personal hygiene practices. Adequate training programs and management supervision are important elements in a program to ensure the preparation of safe fresh produce.
