Food production signage in your business

Food production signage is a great way to educate and remind food handlers of key information. However, production signage can also be a potential source of contamination in your production environment if not managed correctly.

Welcome to Week 28 of the HACCP Mentor Food Safety HACCP Challenge. This week the focus is on production signage. This week you are challenged to check that all food production signage is adequately secured, clean and intact.

What you need to do

This challenge involves you walking around your food production facility and auditing food production signage for the following key factors:

  • Is the food production signage secure? Look to see if the signage able to fall off or is it hanging half off the wall.
  • Is the food production signage clean? For a reminder of what clean means click here.
  • Is the food production signage intact? Look for evidence of damage, rips, tears or broken off pieces.
  • Is the food production signage a harbourage for pests? Make sure to check behind your signage as this may be an area that pests, like cockroaches, have set up home.

Is there too much food production signage?

Signage is a great way to educate and remind staff of what needs to be done but sometimes you can have far too much. The key is to make sure that your signage does not become an uncontrolled risk in your food production area. Try and avoid using pins or tacks to secure the signage in place. Take the opportunity during your walk around to remove any signage that is not relevant or current.

What type of food production signage do you have?

Signage takes many different formats from paper to laminate to pre-printed hard plastic. Share below in the comments section what type of signage is used in your food business. It would also be great if you can give examples of the type of messages that you are conveying to your food handlers.

7 thoughts on “Food production signage in your business”

  1. Some of our signs we have in several different colors and slightly different wording and we rotate the placement and colors weekly, because people quickly become “sign-blind”.
    In a couple areas where we have ongoing issues with people propping doors open we stated placing signs on the bottom corner of he doors, it seems to be effective so far as propping incidents have decreased

  2. What is the safest recommended method of hanging signs in a production area?
    I thought of using Push pins, tape or even hanging them from the ceiling, etc..?

    1. Amanda Evans-Lara

      It really depends on where the sign is located within production. The less signage the better and make sure it does not become a risk in the process.

  3. Margaret Griffith

    How does room signage work? Sign above the door of the area you are walking into or sign above door on the room you are in?

    1. Amanda Evans-Lara

      Hi Margaret

      I am not sure of your exact question here. Can you please elaborate further? What does the sign say, what is its purpose?

  4. For sanitation purposes we do not have any signage in our production areas other than what is required by OSHA (Safety Regulations) and the universal sign for hand washing on our hand wash sinks. However, we do have signage in non-production areas. We have industrial style hand washing procedure signs in our restrooms as well as our locker rooms and a reminder to wash hands before returning to work station at the exit of our break room. We also have some laminated basic reminder signs (i.e. remove jewelry, wear hairnets and beard nets, etc…) in our entry way. The only other advertisement we utilize is a bulletin board that we change out monthly with a new topic on food safety and quality. – It took me a while to realize but not that many people actually read posts but if you have too many posts then even the ones who do read them will miss something.

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