Seek and Destroy: Best Practices for Controlling Environmental Pathogens

Team meetings. These meetings are not committee meetings to discuss why GMPs are not working. Lengthy notes are not expected nor wanted. Instead the focus is on action taken to accomplish the results expected.

Task team leaders report progress and identify any roadblocks to success, which become key issues for resolution. These may be solvable within the team (vested authority to make change is a critical component of each team member’s responsibility); those that cannot must be addressed by team leadership, or plant and/or corporate management.

Action taken on roadblocks is reported in the team’s action log or action register. Transparency and communication of solutions to roadblocks and best practices implemented are needed to reinforce the preventive mindset of the organization.
Management, quality, and maintenance must all hold one another accountable for timely action on roadblocks, and each has a specific role to fill.

Figure 2. Seek and Destroy Mission
Image credit: FoodSafetyByDesign, LLC & Land O’ Frost

1. Management’s role: Management must support team training and provide facilitation when needed. Team members’ time must be allocated appropriately—this is another reason to keep the scope very narrow and address the most significant risks. The management systems of SOP, SSOP, operational procedures, and work instructions must support the documentation, training, and implementation of changes made by the team. In addition, management must not let the team “boil the ocean”—focus and execution are keys to success.
2. Quality’s role: Audits are designed by quality management to recognize changes made and to hold gains.
3. Maintenance’s role: The maintenance PM system is most often the ideal way of managing simple changes. The team leader and maintenance/engineering members can input and create work orders to address the types of problems that are encountered. Periodic infrastructure cleaning (PIC) and periodic equipment cleaning (PEC) are often best managed with the maintenance PM system.

Teams and teamwork best practices. It’s a good idea to rotate team leader and team members to create greater buy-in within the workforce. Take pictures and tell stories to onboard and engage new team members. They will spread and be used as a basis for the normal and accepted behavior.

Be sure to keep the team charter simple—two pages maximum. The charter should identify the team as the accountable body within the facility to define and implement process control measures. Management must support this concept and approach, and provide resources.

The determination of results expected is broken into smaller tasks. Assigned task teams are typically led by an S&D Team member. Task teams are small but employ key affected parties for solutions and implementations. The implementation of recognized best practices eliminates needless research and firefighting.

Teamwork enables the plant organization as a whole to have a much deeper understanding of “why” certain procedures exist as well as how to follow data and to use it to hold gains. “Why” is a driver of the process—a key to sustainability.

Eliminate Harborage

Hollow rollers have been and continue to be one of the greater nemeses of the food industry. The conveyor picture is from Bruce Tompkin, PhD (retired from ConAgra Foods).

A growth niche is defined as a location that supports microbiological growth and is protected from the sanitation process; it is characterized by high microbial counts after normal cleaning and sanitation. A harborage site is defined as a growth niche that contains the pathogen or its indicator. (For a complete list of Environmental Monitoring Operational Definitions see the 3M Environmental Monitoring Handbook 1st Edition.)

The slide image has been used in the (North) American Meat Institute’s Listeria Intervention and Control workshop for almost two decades. The conveyor picture is from Bruce Tompkin, PhD (retired from ConAgra Foods). This is classic because hollow rollers have been and continue to be one of the greater nemeses of the food industry. A classic mode of contamination and recontamination occurs during every cleaning cycle during the initial rinse. The rinse down and removal of product debris unfortunately enables food, water, and microorganisms to penetrate the hollow member, making the bacteria protected from the cleaning and sanitizing chemicals. Further rinsing only provides more water for growth. Land O’ Frost and I found the depth and degree of penetration is directly correlated to the force of the rinse water. High pressure used during sanitation is a major cause of sanitary design issues becoming growth niches and harborage sites.