Tag Archive for: ssops

Copious Records Support the Food Safety Plan

Start with the Written Food Safety Plan
As a member of the Expert Services team for ConnectFood, I recently completed a project writing a food safety plan in cooperation with a company owner. My perspective is always that the company I am working with remotely is doing the right things for food safety, and I am here to get plans written down and to put in place documentation of Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) or preventive controls. I believe the company to be innocent of any food safety shortcomings, until proven “guilty”, i.e. the identification of a gap in food safety. Since this company was complex, members of the Expert Services team logged on for a real-time walk through the facility as seen remotely on our computer screens. I found this step of working with the company to be very helpful. The food safety plan was written, edited, and revised until we had a final product. The company is doing a respectable job of recording the specifics of a kill step. In the past, that may have satisfied requirements for HACCP supported by GMPs, but the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act requires so much more.

Supply Chain Preventive Controls
There are two areas this company needs to expand, and your company may be in the same boat. One is the supplier approval program to prove safety of foods and ingredients where the supplier is controlling the hazards. These are supply chain preventive controls for which control is proven by verification, and verification generates copious logs and records. The inspector will ask to see your Standard Operating Procedure for supplier approval, Certificates of Analysis (COA) for every delivery of an ingredient or food with a supply chain preventive control, verification of the COA, an audit or inspection of the supplier, and any other records which build the case of food safety.

Environmental Monitoring Program
The second area is the environmental monitoring program for control of Listeria in ready-to-eat (RTE) products. All facilities manufacturing RTE products have documentation of a sanitation preventive control. The cleaning and sanitizing program is designed to obliterate biofilms and microbial niches and kill pathogens on equipment and in the manufacturing environment. Validation is not required by the Preventive Controls for Human Food rule, but a validation study is highly encouraged. How do you know cleaning and sanitizing is working, if not validated? Verification of the sanitation preventive controls requires swabbing for indicator organisms and Listeria itself. The goal of the environmental monitoring program is to detect Listeria. Some companies have a fulltime employee dedicated to monitoring and recordkeeping to stay on top of the environmental monitoring program. The inspector will ask how many swabs are tested weekly and from which sites, where were the positives, and what was the corrective action. A robust program is expected to find Listeria. The key is to take appropriate corrective action and follow up to verify the problem was eradicated.

Templates for Standard Operating Procedures, logs, and records are available in the ConnectFood Library. If you are new to ConnectFood, take inventory of all the resources. If you have been working with ConnectFood already, take a minute to see what is new that can support you in your job. As always, we are real humans here to support you in food safety. Reach out at any time; the folks at ConnectFood are here to help! Contact us.

About the Author
Kathy Knutson, Ph.D.
Kathy Knutson Food Safety Consulting
Dr. Kathy Knutson works nationwide with food manufacturers on recall investigations, problem-solving, training, and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) compliance. After being trained in 2016 as a Lead Instructor with the FDA-recognized curriculum for Preventive Controls Qualified Individuals, she delivered over 20 workshops to industry. With over 35 years in microbiology and 15 years of full-time teaching, Dr. Knutson is passionate about training and is an effective communicator at all levels in an organization. She has taught and consulted with companies on laboratory methods, interpretation of lab results, quality assurance, sanitation, environmental monitoring, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs), Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) and the FDA’s Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). As a life-long learner, Dr. Knutson is trained in prevention of intentional adulteration, a topic on the horizon for the food industry. Dr. Knutson is a contributing author at CannabisIndustryJournal.com. Dr. Knutson writes a food safety blog and contributes expert services to manufacturers through connectfood.com, an online site for writing HACCP and food safety plans. When Dr. Knutson is not traveling, she works from home in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where she lives with her husband, two sons, and an adorable Bernedoodle. Learn more about her at https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathyknutsonphd

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Software Update – Expert Services and SOP Template Library

Access Food Safety Experts and Standard Operating Procedure Templates

Announcing the major release of ConnectFood version 2.0! The release contains two major features:

  1. The Food Safety Expert Marketplace with On-Demand Services
  2. Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) templates

In our continuing pursuit to best serve you, these two features help make writing Food Safety Plans even easier!

1. Food Safety Expert Services On Demand!

You now have the ability to hire highly-vetted food safety experts from
our national partner network at a fraction of the cost and at a faster response of traditional consulting services. Average experience of food safety experts is over 10 years in the food industry. You can request a FREE quote on any of the readily available services listed below:

  • Expert Help to Write Food Safety Plans
  • Expert Reviews of Existing Food Safety Plans
  • Process Authority Letters
  • Expert Help to Write Recall Plans
  • Standard Operating Procedures Development or Review
  • Audit Preparation
  • Laboratory Verification Tests
  • Laboratory Validation Tests
  • Good Manufacturing Practices Review
  • Implementation Record Review

ConnectFood Expert Services

Our Food Safety Expert network is composed of food engineers, chemical engineers, food scientists, and others involved in various aspects of food safety. They will partner with you to help you write your food safety plans and perform your hazard analysis. They can help ensure that your facility’s Good Manufacturing Practices (Code of Federal Regulations 117) are compliant. ConnectFood Expert Partners such as Process Authorities can help evaluate the worst-case parameters of your processing equipment. There are so many risk based variables to assess, and a food safety expert help will make sure you are addressing all of them to keep your food product manufacturing process safe and compliant with Food and Drug Administration and United States Department of Agriculture regulations.

For a more detailed description of each service, be sure to login with your account and navigate to “Expert Services”.

If you are a Food Safety Expert and would like to join ConnectFood’s partner network, please contact us here.

2. Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) Template Library

Also included in this major release is a Sanitation SOP and SOP library. These are templates that you can import into your own list of SOPs to modify in order to save you time and start you off with some guidelines.

ConnectFood Expert Services

Well written Sanitation SOPs are the foundation of a good sanitation program. A sanitation program will include training records, Sanitation SOPs, and monitoring of sanitation preventive controls.

The ConnectFood SOP library is consistently growing the the number of templates available is a part of our Premium level subscription plan. Sign up today to gain access to this valuable feature!

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Sanitation Standard Operating Procedures (SSOPs)

In the blog post, The Basics of Sanitation in the Food Industry, I laid the foundation for a successful sanitation program. I discussed:

  • What is soil?
  • The sanitation crew members are your most valuable employees.
  • There are four crucial factors for successful cleaning and sanitizing.
  • What are clean-in-place (CIP) and clean-out-of-place (COP) procedures?

Sanitation crews work hard. Sanitation crews have a lot of turnover and require extensive training and monitoring. The crew must be supplied with the resources they need to do the job right. Crew members must be trained to handle chemicals safely and wear appropriate personal protective equipment. The crew is supplied with EPA-registered cleaning and sanitizing chemicals and follow the manufacturer’s directions. After training and when an employee’s performance is good, please pay them well.

On this foundation, companies will build a sanitation program with training records, Sanitation Standard Operating Procedures (SSOPs), and monitoring of sanitation preventive controls.

Document training.

Every sanitation crew member is a qualified individual as defined by the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) final rule for Preventive Controls for Human Food. FSMA requires documented training records. Most companies fulfill this function through human resources, but owners of small companies may be doing this record-keeping. Because training records are required, you must be ready for a federal or state inspector to review the training records. During the on-boarding process of a new sanitation crew member, document the training. Document a follow-up observation to confirm the work is being done correctly. Document additional training as the employee takes on more responsibilities.

Document cleaning and sanitizing procedures.

SSOPs are detailed step-by-step procedures and can be written with your chemical supply company. The chemical supply company should have resources to answer all your questions. The SSOPs will be tailored to your manufacturing equipment, your product, and your cleaning and sanitizing procedures. Beyond your chemical supply company, there is a wealth of information to sift through on-line. ConnectFood provides resources on their site and will match you up with experts in the design of cleaning and sanitizing programs.

Your company may already be doing all the right steps for cleaning and sanitizing, and that is great! Attaining clean and sanitary equipment as well as manufacturing environments supersedes all other sanitation team goals. However, written SSOPs will help to ensure that all sanitation crew members are following the same steps in the way the procedures were designed. Written SSOPs are critical to training. Remember, there is usually great turnover in sanitation crews, and new employees are frequently being on-boarded. If crew members are unsure about a step or disagree about a step, the written SSOP will explain the procedure to follow. If there are deviations, the written SSOP will get the process back on track.

I highly encourage clients to write SSOPs with pictures of the chemical labels, tools being used on equipment, clean-in-place control panels and tanks, and the finished job of clean surfaces. A picture is worth ten thousand words, said Fred R. Barnard. Click here to see a splendid example of an SSOP with pictures that I found on-line.

Effective SSOPs are key in our complex world of allergen control. Does your product contain one or more allergens? The big eight regulated by the FDA are wheat, soy, egg, milk, peanut, tree nuts, fish and shellfish. If you make a product which contains an allergen and then use the same line to make another product without the allergen, you must have a complete allergen clean step. The clean step is designed to remove residue of the allergen, so that cross-contact into the next product does not occur. In this case you would have a preventive control for the allergen.

Monitor cleaning and sanitizing.

If you have an allergen clean step or an environmental monitoring program as required by the FSMA Preventive Controls for Human Food rule, you will have a preventive control in your cleaning and sanitizing program. With a preventive control comes the requirement to monitor and document the step. Record-keeping proves you did what you say you are doing in your SSOPs. Keep this simple! Here are examples of what you can record:

  • Visual check after cleaning with a simple pass/fail
  • ATP test result
  • Amount of cleaner added to what amount of water
  • pH of cleaning solution
  • Concentration of sanitizer with a dip test strip
  • CIP tank temperature
  • CIP run time on a recording chart
  • Sanitation supervisor checks that an allergen clean was done after production with an allergen

Use this list as a menu of choices and add your own options. If this information creates more questions, seek out resources. The science of cleaning and sanitizing is vast, in which some people have devoted their entire careers. The concept is that you must prove that you did what you say you are doing in your SSOPs. If critical parameters for successful cleaning and sanitizing are time, temperature, and concentration, then how are you going to document the data?

The search for forms and checklists can be overwhelming, and the ConnectFood website has free resources. The partners at ConnectFood are here to help! Contact us.

Dr. Kathy Knutson has food safety expertise in microbiology, hazard analysis, and risk assessment. As a recovering academic, she resides in Green Bay home-of-the-Packers, Wisconsin with her brilliant husband and two handsome sons. Learn more about her consulting services at https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathyknutsonphd.

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