Cure for a symptomatic problem

Imagine the scenario of visiting the doctor and being told, “take these tablets and come back and see me next week if it doesn’t clear up”. In many such cases, treatment of the root cause is passed over in favour of treating the symptoms.

This is scenario is also applicable to the food Industry, where the industry is doing the self-same thing every day. When it comes to food production hygiene, manufacturers are usually treating the “symptom” and neglecting to find the “cause” of the symptom to eliminate it.

For instance, we have an outbreak of Listeria species in the factory, which is detected on floors, machinery and in the end product. The first, and in many cases, the only reaction is “flush everything with disinfectant and bleach solution”.

This normally gets rid of the immediate Listeria problem (the symptom) but fails miserably to prevent it happening again in the future as the cause is ignored. This could be any of the following:

• Drains in a poor condition and impossible to clean and disinfect
• Water pooling around the plant
• A leaking roof in the factory during heavy rain
• Personnel ignoring High Care/Low Care protocol
• Difficulty in stripping down complex equipment for cleaning
• Poor cleaning from badly trained operators
• Ingress from Raw Materials
• Ingress from packaging
• Poor Hygiene practices on the Production line
• Poor choice of Cleaning Chemicals
• Poor training of Cleaning and Production Operatives
• Poor footwear protocol and boot washing.

Short term view

There are other scenarios where the symptom is more likely to be treated than the cause.

A new piece of equipment has lost its polished shine and is looking dull. The dullness is treated by application of a strong acid to descale the surface. This only lasts for a couple of weeks and needs to be repeated as the scale builds up again providing a home in which bugs could settle. The causes could be:

• Hard water scale building up because the Water Softener is ineffective in the factory and needs regenerating.
• The Chemicals used for cleaning have no chelating power and thus allow scales to drop out during cleaning and rinsing.
• The Chemicals used for cleaning are not suitable and deposit “metasilicate” scale on the surface during the cleaning process.
• The Temperature of the rinse water (both prior to cleaning and post cleaning) is too high and drops scale out on all surfaces as drying takes place.
• Post clean rinsing is poor leaving chemical residues on the machine.
• The chemical strength is far too high during cleaning. This may be due to operators using higher strengths to combat the initial problem and unwittingly causing more scale thus escalating the deposition.

Tackle the source

Another common scenario is a detection of E. coli around the plant and in finished product. Again, the symptom is treated by “upping” the level of cleaning, applying vast quantities of disinfectant and washing down lines between production runs during the shift. The symptom is thus removed for a short period of time. The cause could be any, or all, of the following:

• Poor hand washing techniques at the sink areas
• Poor effectivity of hand soap
• Non-use of the alcohol based post-wash hand sanitiser
• Poor glove hygiene
• Poor personal hygiene on the production line
• Ingress from water source
• Ingress from raw aterials and packaging
• Roof problems allowing bird droppings into production areas
• Poor air extraction/filtration systems
• Pest problems.

The food industry needs to look further than a “take two aspirin” remedy and by using common sense, audits and a wealth of knowledge from many sources, locate, investigate and correct the cause. Only this can prevent the symptoms occurring again with the subsequent costs.