How clean is your cleaning equipment?

Week 14 – Food Safety HACCP Challenge

To be able to keep your food premises and production areas clean you need to have cleaning equipment. However have you ever considered that your cleaning equipment could be a source of contamination? Welcome to Week 14 of the Food Safety HACCP Challenge. I am really enjoying putting these challenges together for you so thanks for all of you who are participating.

Cleaning equipment in your food business

This week, you are challenged to check that all of the cleaning equipment that your food business uses is both clean and stored correctly. Now this may seem pretty straight forward, but I am amazed how many food businesses that I audit completely forget about the actual cleaning equipment.

How to Complete this Challenge

Week 14 of the #FSHChallenge has a few different steps for you to complete.  You can complete it like a mini cleaning equipment audit if you like. I have put together a free audit checklist for you to download here.

1. Visually check the level of cleanliness of your cleaning equipment. Keep in mind what the definition of what clean means.

2. If you find that items are not clean, organise to rectify that non-conformance and get it cleaned.

3. Visually check how the piece of cleaning equipment is stored. When you are doing this check, ask the following questions:

  • Is it stored directly on the ground?
  • Can the piece of cleaning equipment contaminate your finished product, work-in-progress or raw materials?
  • Is the piece of cleaning equipment stored directly on a food contact surface?
  • Is it stored above open food ingredients or food product?

4. Check that your cleaning equipment has been included on your cleaning schedule. This is an item that is sometimes forgotten to be documented.

Need a template? Check out my cleaning templates here

Potential source of foreign matter

Whilst you are looking at the cleaning equipment, take the opportunity to also check the physical condition of your cleaning equipment. You don’t want cleaning equipment that is frayed, broken, cracked, splintering or damaged. All of these issues could potentially become a source of foreign matter contamination in your finished product or raw materials.

How did you do?

I love getting your feedback on how you did in the weekly #FSHChallenges. All you need to do is leave a comment below this post and don’t forget to share with your team!

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