A food processing plant takes in ingredients and puts out finished products. In between, there are machines, supplies, recipes, water at different temperatures, and surfaces.
However, the plant would not produce anything at all if it were not for the people who work there. Everyone throughout the hierarchy, from the maintenance person to the managers in the executive suite, must work together to create the product and get it into the marketplace.
The plant would be unable to produce clean and wholesome food products without just about everyone being concerned with and effective about questions of sanitation and food plant hygiene. Moreover, to produce the appropriate level of concern and capability, employees at every level need to receive sanitation training.
Many companies have learned the hard way that failing to create a zero-defect culture of sanitation excellence can have expensive, even fatal consequences. Brands, which have been painstakingly built over decades, have been damaged, sometimes beyond the possibility of recovery, by a single instance of food-borne illness being traced back to their processing plant.
It is management’s responsibility to both ensure that all employees receive appropriate training and to provide good examples by embodying the practices and the motivation for proper sanitary procedures.
Management is also responsible for ensuring that they are also adequately trained themselves. There are many important areas that all levels of management can receive essential training. Employee training is available from many different third-party providers, or training can be developed in-house.
No matter where the training comes from, it is important to have a single person or a team dedicated to training. The temptation may be to teach only the required techniques and procedures. Sanitation training tends to be more effective when employees are presented with the reason for particular procedures, rather than just being given a set of rules, training is additionally effective when procedures are tied to the larger business and public health imperatives behind sanitary practice.
FSS Food Safety understands the importance of a well-trained team in supporting good food plant hygiene programs. Everything we sell, whether sanitation chemicals, other sanitation supplies or equipment, we know how to use and can train you in its proper application. We, like you, are part of an industry committed to producing clean, wholesome, safe, and high-quality food products. We have been perfecting our food industry cleaning expertise for a long time.