Sanitary Process Equipment: Product Safety Guidelines and Standards
Processing industries, such as: food, pharmaceutical, chemical, petfood, and many more recognize, everyday, their primary objective is to produce safe product that is free of microbial and physical contaminants. This is no mystery. It's a matter of fact. And, often, a matter of survival. Sure, their objective is clear, and the various industry guidelines, third-party standards, and governmental regulations are in place to, supposedly, assist in achieving the objective. Yet, with all the clarity of objective, and instruction for its achievement, a glance into these processing industries would seem to indicate a willingness to tolerate the integration of functionally inappropriate process equipment -- even at the risk of: [i] creating an unnecessary hindrance to cleanability and validation, [ii] increasing the likelihood of non-sanitary operation, [iii] heightened exposure to contaminates, [iv] incompatibility with sanitary facility design principles,[v] greater hazard for operators, cleaning and maintenance staff, and validation/inspection personnel, and [vi] reduced overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).
Sanitary tote dumper with application-specific, functionally appropriate design and construction provides definitive compliance with industry guidelines, regulatory standards.
Why the risk tolerance? Why the willingness to accept degrees of functionally appropriate equipment? Why the willingness to compromise and trade-off process equipment performance variables? "It's a common misperception within many processing and packaging operations that the necessity for truly sanitary equipment design increases only as material gets closer to the center of process operations," says Tom Krueger, CMC, president of Summit Laboratory. "Unfortunately, as a result, many processing operations have settled for force-fit, general industry bulk material handling equipment. In doing so, they have done little to eliminate the presence of contaminants at the point of material introduction, and possibly put their entire, downstream process operation at risk," says Krueger. "Likewise, without functionally appropriate sanitary bulk container filling and packaging equipment, the introduction into the marketplace of contaminated finished product can become an increased risk."
Related posts:
- Sanitary Bulk Material Handling Equipment Cleanability: Value, Risk & Outcome
- Bulk Filling and Discharging Equipment Guide Book Presents In-use Advantages of Application-specific Sanitary Equipment Versus Force-fit General Equipment
- Sanitary Bulk Material Handling Equipment: Structural Design and Contaminant Removal
- Bulk Material Handling in Sanitary Applications: Regulatory Influences and Compliance-ready Equipment Design
- Sanitary Bulk Material Handling Equipment Accessibility: Bringing Speed, Safety, and Confidence to Cleaning