Hygenic Plant Design for Allergen Management

While lack of proper hygienic plant design increases the risk of cross-contamination, refurbishing the facility or building a new one is rarely a realistic solution, as that would be financially unsustainable. The only way to offset the risk is by adding checks, sanitation practices, inspections, and procedures on top of the existing procedures.

A common scenario would be two products with incompatible allergen profiles running on separate but adjacent production lines. “Depending on the particular allergen, I have seen plastic strip curtains going from ceiling to floor, or actual temporary walls being used,” says Waskiewicz. “When conveyors of two different product lines are crossing paths, these are sometimes reconfigured to eliminate opportunities for cross-contact.”

Other solutions would be to upgrade the ventilation system (to deal with airborne particles) or to invest in hygienically designed equipment and tools.

Before adopting any solution, however, it’s still important to know which paths allergens take inside your building. “Knowledge is power, so it would be really helpful for companies to just map out where allergens are going,” says Forward, adding that you could have them come only to certain door ducts, or funnel them. “Even if you’re dealing with an old facility, you still can find other options,” she adds.

A non-negotiable countermeasure, however, will be to increase cleaning and sanitation: “When you don’t have a very good design, that’s the biggest [area] affected. That means you have to sanitize much more frequently,” says Waskiewicz.

Trying to compensate for a non-optimal plant layout isn’t guaranteed to work every time. One issue is cost: “There are all kinds of quick fixes that you can do but in the long run, they’re going to cost you more,” says Kalish. Additional checks require more time and resources: Increasing cleaning and sanitation needs more manpower, and production output may suffer if lines have to stop more often; temporary walls may have to be replaced eventually, even if they are cleaned often, especially with airborne dry allergens; and while hygienically designed equipment and utilities may cost less than a new facility, they’re likely to be more expensive than average.

The other issue is that you may decrease the risk of cross-contamination only up to a point. “You can improve the equipment design and utilities in critical areas, such as pipe work, electrical conduits, and duct work. But other than that, there’s not a lot you can do, because the traffic pattern is always the problem,” says Morgan.

Risk Versus Profit

If the chances of cross-contamination are still high despite all countermeasures, then the question is whether the risk of a recall is worth the profit coming from that product: “Sometimes there are tough decisions that have to be made where you can’t run products,” says Forward. Temporary fixes may then just leave the two main issues at stake—risks and costs—unsolved. Lowering the risk of cross-contamination costs money. Not lowering it enough is also a cost. Quite often, the problem is that in the latter case, that cost isn’t visible.

“Most people in the food industry are doing their best to protect people, but it comes back to our quality leaders to be able to communicate to upper management the choices that we need to make in dollars and cents, to help them make the right decisions,” says Forward. “What is the cost of a recall? What is the cost of capital improvement, and what are the costs of Band-Aid fixes? Even some kind of ballpark will help them, because the cost of a life is never going to be less than that.”

Forward also notes that pathogen management is very well developed, while allergen management is more in its “teenage years.” She thinks allergen management is often overlooked because there’s little awareness by top management as to how important this is, or the time needed to fully evaluate it. “Often, it’s simply about watching how the warehouse guys move the product from one point to another. Most companies don’t do that because people aren’t paid to stand around and watch, but that’s what’s needed in order to make improvements,” she says.