In March 2024, Meritech and Quality Assurance Magazine collaborated on a webinar exploring the significance of various methods for sanitizing dry footwear. During the session, our CTO Paul Barnhill and VP of Sales and Marketing Will Eaton delved into the advantages and challenges associated with different dry footwear sanitation techniques. Dive into the full webinar featuring a live demonstration and engaging Q&A session above! For those interested in learning more about dry footwear sanitation, be sure to check out this valuable resource.
Full transcript of the webinar below:
Jason Brill: Hello everyone and welcome. I'm Jason Brill, editor of QA Magazine. Thanks for taking some time out of your schedule to attend today's webinar: Dry Footwear Sanitation and Food Processing, presented by Meritech. In this webinar, we will explore key components necessary when implementing an effective dry footwear sanitation solution at your facility, including identifying the right location, validating the process, and maintaining consistency.
Drawing from real world examples in food processing facilities, our speakers will share how FSQA managers prevent pathogens from entering production areas, using smart hygiene zone design and footwear hygiene equipment. As well as stop any contamination from transition zones from RAW to RTE areas.
Additionally, they will elaborate on techniques to validate the efficacy of a footwear safety program. And how to maintain consistency across individuals, shifts, and locations. Using training resources. visual cues, and automation to streamline the hygiene process.
A quick note from QA to pass along before we introduce today's speakers. The views expressed in today's webinar are those of the speakers and not necessarily QA or our parent company, GIE Media. The presentation made during this webinar does not constitute an endorsement of the vendor's or speaker's views, products, or services. Our format for today is to have an informational discussion, and we encourage everyone to ask your questions throughout by typing them into the Q& A interface at the bottom of your screens. Also, we are recording today's webinar, so if you miss any of it or want to watch it again, it will be available on our site.
Jason Brill: And now I'd like to welcome our speakers. Paul Barnhill is Chief Technology Officer and Hygiene Expert at Meritech. He has more than 30 years of experience working with professionals in food manufacturing, healthcare, and food service to address any challenges they have developing effective hygiene programs. Through his expertise, Paul guides on best practices in hand hygiene, footwear sanitation, and the science of pathogen removal.
Jason Brill: I'd also like to welcome Will Eaton, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Meritech, where he leads the sales and marketing efforts at the company. He specializes in delivering the ideal hygiene solutions to both domestic and international leaders in food processing industry. His focus at Meritech is on enhancing the sales process and customer experience, ensuring that the company's clients receive the right equipment for their specific needs and consistently enjoy exceptional service during onsite visits and interactions with the Meritech support team. And with that, I will hand things over to you, Paul and Will.
Will Eaton: Great. Thank you so much for the introduction. And I'd like to thank everybody for joining live or watching this recorded. Great introduction. So Meritech, we're located in Golden, Colorado. We are a manufacturer of automated hygiene equipment. I've been doing this for a very long time. We're excited to talk about this topic, dry footwear sanitation.
Footwear sanitation is something that myself and the Meritech team talk about on a daily basis. So we're excited to talk about this topic with everybody. Let's talk about the why, right? Let's cover a few why's of this presentation. So the first why of footwear sanitation is going to be pathogen control focused around food safety for your organization, right? That's the biggest why. That, that we address when working with customers to help develop the correct program for them.
The next why that we hear a lot about, is environmental monitoring programs what our customers are doing internally for their EM programs to make sure, they're adhering to their goals and standards.
And the next big why that we're hearing a lot lately which, I'm sure is front and center for a lot of people is the FDA's increased focus around environmental sampling. Some changes that happened to the investigations operations manual. Specifically in chapter four around environmental sampling. This came out in 2023. The FDA has specifically said there's going to be an increased focus of environmental sampling due to the increase in foodborne outbreaks. So with their routine environmental sampling, their focus is to do sampling, right? The majority of that sampling is going to be done in zone 1.
And for those who aren't familiar with zone one, that is directly adjacent to food contact surfaces. The environmental sampling then will go into zone 2, potentially zone 3, unlikely into zone 4. What is the FDA looking for with this sampling? Two pathogens. They're looking for salmonella and listeria.
Will Eaton: When they're swabbing for salmonella per chapter four they're doing at least 100 swabs up to 300, and when they're sampling for listeria, we're looking at least 50 swabs up to 100 swabs. So that's a big why that we're hearing about but as far as a trend in footwear the team here, we've seen an increase in footwear awareness, probably really starting about three to four years ago.
And that's one of the things that we're talking talking about on a daily basis on a consult, a consultative approach. The next thing, we'd like to bring up are the challenges, right? What are the challenges? with footwear sanitation and developing a footwear program. Unfortunately, there's not a one size fits all solution. There's a lot of factors that go into recommending, the proper footwear sanitation, program and products. The first one that comes up is the environment we're dealing with, right? Is the plant wet or dry? The focus of this presentation is dry and dry facilities pose a lot more challenges than a wet facility and a lot less options for sanitizing than a wet facility.
The next thing we want to always think about is the goals. What are the goals of our customers? And this is where, footwear programs get really challenging. It's a whole different project when someone's looking at, controlling pathogens for street shoes coming in. How are we going to address street shoes? Versa program when we're working with the customer who's implemented or is going to implement a captive footwear program, sanitizing footwear in a captive program is very different than looking at a footwear program where we're allowing street shoes to come into a facility. So those two big things, total different discussions when we're talking to a customer.
The next big thing with challenges is, what's going on in the facility? Are we dealing with debris? Are we not dealing with debris? Do we want to remove debris and sanitize? Or do we just want to sanitize?
So those are the things we're going to talk about during this webinar the agenda That we're going to cover here in the in this hour Is paul and I are going to go over just a real quick presentation talk about a lot of these topics. I just brought up Paul is going to get into efficacy testing all the stuff like that we have done here And then we're going to go to a virtual demo of our EVO One with our footwear sanitizing enhancement and open it up to Q&A from there.
So please have questions. Paul and I want to answer questions. We want this to be as interactive as possible.
Will Eaton: All right. What are we looking at, right? What are the three things we're looking at for an effective, footwear sanitizing program? The big one is efficacy. Paul is going to talk a lot about that, but high level when it comes to footwear, clinical validation is a challenge, right? If you're looking for something that's clinically validated, we couldn't find it. Therefore we did it. Paul is going to talk to you about how we did that validation to get the efficacy we wanted, a lot of times what we'll see is this chemical is effective in vitro, eight seconds is what we need to kill salmonella.
That's great, but how are you getting the eight seconds of contact time and a test tube is very different than the bottom of footwear. We'll talk about that in the studies we did. Biggest thing is consistency as well. We want to make sure everyone who's entering production or going into a transition area is getting the same event, the same type of footwear sanitizing event so that there's no, we're not missing the mark anywhere.
Explore Meritech footwear efficacy testing here
Everyone's getting the same thing every single time. So consistency is huge for us. Location's the next one. Obviously we want to talk about preventing the pathogens from even entering production. very much. Making sure they don't even get to zone 4, zone 3, 2, and especially 1, right? A lot of that's going to be done in your GMP zone.
Will Eaton: Other areas we're looking at is transition areas. Do we have an area where we're going from a raw to a ready? What's being done with footwear there and then are there other entrances, right? You might have the primary entrance taken care of, but is there a backdoor? What's being done at the backdoor? Who's coming in the backdoor? Exactly. So those are the things we're looking at.
So as I mentioned dry environments pose some challenges and there's not as many options out there for footwear sanitation. Some of the ones we see, and we'll talk about these in the following, following slides, dry quat powder, UV sanitation, tacky mats, booties, and we'll talk a lot about that and then our most popular system I talked about is our CleanTech® with the Sole Clean Enhancement.
Explore the CleanTech® Automated Handwashing Station
Explore the Sole Clean Enhancement
Will Eaton: Booties. All righty Are we removing pathogens or are we just covering them up, right? So booties, they're covering up the bottoms of shoes. Personally, I'm not a fan of booties. Very wasteful. Very expensive. You'll see a quote there in the right. We actually had a customer say they saved a hundred thousand dollars a year by eliminating booties and going to our sole clean option.
Discover cost savings case studies
The other thing that is challenging for booties, in my opinion unless you have the automated one where you put your foot in and it automatically places a booty on your foot, putting your hands to footwear is a hygiene challenge. And you're exposing your hands to pathogens. If you have listeria or salmonella on the bottom of your shoes or the sides of your soles, and now you're reaching down there to put a booty on, we now have a cross contamination event. So depending on where the booties are put on in your process, Hopefully they're not after a hand wash because that just defeats the whole purpose. So waste and challenges with booties.
Will Eaton: Tacky mats. We typically see tacky mats more in a clean room, pharmaceutical manufacturing environment. Not as much in food processing but they can be used with all footwear. They remove, small particles and debris. Your sanitation your maintenance team is going to have to replace them a good amount which is costly.
UV sanitation. Me personally, I have not seen one of these systems in a food processing or food packaging plant yet. I have seen them online. I've seen them in other applications. I haven't been able to really see a lot of the efficacy, associated with them. What I've heard and what I've read is it takes a lot of time. How much time do you need to stand on the UV lights?
Paul Barnhill: Like you have a type of protein or something like that. It becomes incredibly challenged because it's not going through that protein.
Will Eaton: Absolutely. And then I heard there's a little bit of a risk to potential, your eyes, if you're looking down at the UV, so a little bit of a safety risk there as well.
What we see a lot in in food processing and food packaging, especially a dry environment is a dry quat. I have done a lot of research personally on the efficacy of dry quat. Specifically looking for contact time, how much time do I need to stand in dry quat to have any type of impact on salmonella and listeria. Most of the times what I see, especially from even the manufacturers of dry quat, it does say it requires moisture for activation. Which introducing moisture is what a lot of people are trying to avoid in a dry facility. Therefore, I question the efficacy of the, of this type of solution. The other thing is it does travel everywhere in a facility. It is corrosive on equipment. I've talked to a lot of maintenance teams who aren't a big fan and have shown me, firsthand what drive quat has done to the equipment within a facility. And then with the traveling everywhere, if it's a vertical plant and it's in a tread and it falls down on a production line, that is super, super dangerous for food safety. Recently we had, someone on our team in a facility and there was dry quat really right up into zone one which was right next to the food contact surface. Which means there is a chance it could get up there which is what we want to avoid. Those are the stuff we see, as different options in a dry facility.
Learn more about dry quat sanitizers
Paul Barnhill: When we look at a facility and really understand what is best practices for their hygiene, we've adopted a process we call the three P's. It really is about the people, the place and the product. And so let's dive into kind of each one of those individually and figure out exactly what we look at as consultants for employee hygiene and how we can best explain this as well as in work with you with.
So when we look at the people, we're looking at multiple things. We're looking at one, the number of staff that you have, the number of shifts that you have in a facility and realistically, where are those people going? Okay. What are they specifically doing? And so that is really key. Not only from footwear, but hand hygiene, touch points, things like that, transition areas.
So we really need to see that. And that really breaks into then what we call our place, really understanding what is this building like, where's the main entrance, where's the parking lot, where are their transition zones in the facilities to really make sure that we have controls in place that is going to put these hygiene intervention steps where they need them.
Paul Barnhill: That's critical because not every food plant is the same. Every time a food plant grows, they build another box. That changes your hygiene zoning substantially, especially if there's people traveling between these different areas.
The last thing that we have in there is really what we call product. Product is super critical because it interacts with everything. This is what you're there to do. This is what they're building. So when they're building their product, are they dealing with the ready to eat or are they dealing with an allergen or are they dealing with a raw product? Or are they doing all of that in the same plant?
Paul Barnhill: What do those satellite hygiene zones or transition zones really look like so that we can design a system, especially when it comes to footwear sanitation and or dry sanitation, because some plants may have a wet zone and may have a dry zone, and you have to treat them differently to make sure that the footwear are sanitized correctly of those staff members.
Read more about hygienic zoning of food processing facilities
All of this together, all of what we talk about is obviously so that we can create safe food. And one of the things that we talk about often is really the culture of that. Or, the foundation of consistency which builds culture. It's about developing the right processes. But at the end of the day, it's about the consumer. Number one thing is making a safe product that people enjoy and people consume. And so one of the things that we've done is really just we even have a hygiene social contract That kind of goes with this is being able to create that couple that with the three p's And we're able to really create a sustainable hygiene process that works for everyone.
So we and there's so many outside factors that come into that you have your environment. That's your people so forth. You have your place You obviously have your customers which are your consumers You And then this other piece that's super hard, Will touched on it earlier today, and that's about this regulatory piece.
Paul Barnhill: All of this has to work in concert to really make sure that we're creating the perfect hygiene culture and everybody is really aligned with the why. So one of the things we touched on earlier, again, this has to go back to the people part of this, is really about footwear. Again, when we go into a building and we're looking at exactly what an operation does, one of the things that we look at when it comes to people is really what type of footwear do they have?
Do they have a captive footwear program within a facility? Are they wearing street shoes? Do they have just plant shoes that are purchased by the company, but people can wear them wherever they want to go? These are really the challenges. Everybody, when they look at footwear are really looking at. A few things like how comfortable is it? Is it really slip trip preventable? Is it got a tripod that's going to work? Do you have to have multiple types of footwear depending on if you're a production worker or you're wet zone, are you in a dry zone? Are you maintenance? But one of the challenges a lot of people don't look at when it comes to choosing footwear is this sanitize-able? Can you sanitize it? Can you easily clean it? Is it going to build debris? In time, where's that footwear stored? That is another critical aspect if that's a plant shoe So we want to look at those things in when we do that We want to make sure that we make the recommendations of not only what is the right footwear for you But what is the right way to sanitize that footwear that you have? And that may be varying depending on where people go or what they do inside that facility because they're going to be different.
Paul Barnhill: The one thing also we'll talk about, we did do real human testing and what we wanted to do is first figure out, What test data was out there, what test methodologies were out there, and what we discovered is it really didn't exist.
So what Meritech did, they worked with a company called Nelson Labs, which is formerly Bioscience Labs out of Bozeman, Montana, to really couple together to figure out how can we do this real world, applying a true pathogen directly to footwear, and then figuring out how well our CleanTech® with the Sole Clean Enhancement can actually sanitize that footwear within a single hygiene event.
We started looking around and we actually adapted a process, what is called the ASTM E1174. But this is mainly for hand hygiene and we're like, okay, how can we adapt this process really to work with footwear? What we did, And to slow this down a little bit and just make sure that we get all the details of this because it's a little complicated which is normally hand hygiene or the glove juice method. We actually created a very large sterile bag so that we could collect data. We stepped, as you can see in the lower right picture, we actually are stepping on a pad that has been saturated with either salmonella or listeria. Then we put this foot directly into the sterile bag and then put in a wicking fluid to be able to really wick off those pathogens so we could get a baseline. So then once we figured out what the baseline is, we went back, stepped on this pad, made sure that we had adequate saturation of that bacteria. Then we went and washed our hands standing in that pan and simulating that, really that 12 seconds of contact exactly with The Sanifect D2, and I'll get into that in just a minute of what we used.
Paul Barnhill: We did this both for Listeria and Salmonella. And then once we got done, we actually put it back in the bag. We whipped it off and we got our net result. So I believe on the next slide is really where we ended up with our results.
What I want to talk about here is really the Sanifect D2 for just a second. So we're using a product that's called Sanifect D2. It is an EPA registered sanitizer. This EPA registered sanitizer is a 50 percent IPA and 200 parts per million of quaternary ammonia. This is a leave on sanitizer not requiring a rinse directly to and for hard surfaces. So as you can see in the chart data that we have above, this is when we did these in replicates, one through three of exactly what we can do both left and right boot, truly on the footwear.
Paul Barnhill: The net result both for Listeria and Salmonella oddly ended the same at 4.24 log reduction or 99.94 percent of that, if you're a log percent person and so forth. But what was really key about this is the number one asset of the CleanTech® with the Sole Clean Enhancement, and that's your contact time.
All sanitizers really need some amount of time depending on what you're dealing with. So this is a standard scenario where this is a street shoe worn in. We used a couple different variants. We used the standard rubber boot with the standard chevron pattern on one. Then we used another footwear that's super popular, very slip resistant, fairly comfortable, and so forth. Not the easiest to clean when it comes to debris and soils, but it is incredibly popular in the industry. So we chose those two footwear's when we did these studies to make sure that we could really represent. What a real world would be in a food plant.
Will Eaton: All right, here's a couple of real world scenarios of Meritech installations where we're addressing footwear On the left hand side, you'll see a CleanTech® with the Sole Clean Enhancement connected to a turnstile. This is hands down the most compliant product we have When you talk about consistency This is it so this product is designed for the user to keep their hands in and they have to keep their hands in for the full 12 second hand wash.
During the virtual demo, we'll talk about how the hand wash works, but it's a 12 second hand wash. If you remove your hands early, the turnstile will not initiate. You will not be able to enter the facility. When Paul was talking about contact time, all of our testing 12 seconds. Hence, hand wash, right? Your hand wash is 12 seconds long. Your feet are on the footwear enhancement for those 12 seconds, getting that 12 seconds of contact time. There's very little products I've seen or setups out there where you're going to get someone to stand still for 12 seconds, hence incorporating the hand wash into the footwear, sanitizing event, getting those two critical objectives done in the 12 seconds.
Will Eaton: So top left you have to be on the pad for 12 seconds You have to have your hands in for 12 seconds, then the turnstile will initiate and you can enter production Everybody is going to get a perfect hygiene event hands and feet with that type of installation The top right picture is a high throughput customer you're looking at three of our EVO Three with Sole Clean. So nine stations for people to go through.
Bottom right is hands down my favorite. So we also manufacture Boot Scrubbers here and that's what in the back of the picture. A lot of people are concerned about boot washers, especially in a dry environment. But this is an installation, where you could use a boot washer in a dry environment. So in this type of scenario, you're looking at a captive footwear program. The boot washer in the back is exit. So everyone leaving production is going across the boot washer. And if you're not familiar with boot washers, we have spinning brushes that are removing debris. We're also hitting the footwear with 800 to a thousand parts per million for the USDA.
Will Eaton: So it's going to be a debris removal and sanitizing event. So in a captive footwear program, the employees leaving production will remove the debris, whatever they picked up in the plant, they're going to have those boots sanitized. The boots will then go into a locker. Where you still have the chemical sitting on the boots overnight, which is a great place for the chemical to be in the morning The employees will put the boots back on and what you see there is an EVO Three with Sole Clean. The employees will do the 12 second hand wash get the 12 seconds of contact time Sanitizing that footwear as well before they enter that is hands down one of my favorite type of installations. I always call it the sanitize in scrub out there are some misconceptions with boot scrubbers with the dry environment because they do require water without a shadow of a doubt. Boot washers can be used entering a dry facility. There just needs to be some standoff from production. A lot of times we see customers use walk off mats, carpet mats that are usually delivered by a Jan San type company.
We recommend that type of installation. If you're bringing street shoes in we would love to remove whatever debris your street shoes picked up before you enter production The only constraint with the dry environment is what does that stand off to production? Ideally, you wouldn't want a boot washer right at the door of production because you will be introducing moisture Because the footwear will be wet after coming across a boot scrubber.
Will Eaton: These are three great, real world installations addressing footwear.
Paul Barnhill: I think one of these facilities The upper right is handling about a thousand staff a day.
Will Eaton: Yep, that's absolutely correct.
Will Eaton: All right. So what we've really covered in here, what really, what are you looking for when you're, establishing an effective footwear program, you want consistency. You absolutely want everybody entering or going into a different area, getting the same type of event every single time. I struggle to find consistency with dry quat. I really do. People step over it. Have they stepped in enough? Did they step over the pile? There's only a few pieces here. I struggled with that one.
Paul Barnhill: How much stayed on the shoe?
Will Eaton: How much stayed on the shoe? Is there moisture?
Paul Barnhill: What is the configuration of that shoe? Does the tri pattern really allow for it to contact?
Will Eaton: Absolutely. Absolutely. I look at dry quat as just throwing money on the floor instead of looking at consistency or validation.
So the next one's validation. Paul did a great job talking about the validation we have done here. We're really proud of that. Like we said really the genesis of us doing, those types of studies is we couldn't find it. We couldn't find it anywhere. And when our customers asked about effectiveness, we wanted to be able to deliver results.
Therefore we embarked on that journey of getting the clinical validation done. And Paul did a great job talking about location. I think we've covered it before. Definitely want to, hit the footwear entering production, but then look at all the other areas where pathogens could enter production or critical areas where it might be a transition to rot already or some type of transition area.
Paul Barnhill: So one of the things that we talked about again with our EVO Stations, coupled with the enhancement of the Sole Clean is really what the versatility of the station is. We have the consistency of the automated handwashing, with the person in there and so forth. But how do we want to assure that we're getting the right amount of sanitizer directly to the Sole Clean pan every single time?
One of the things within the EVO Station we were able to develop is really an all encompassing really software program to replenish this pan. Multiple different ways What you're seeing on the screen right now is really just the main menu screens inside the system that can be customizable depending on your plan. One of the things I talked about earlier when we're talking about the three p's Is every one of those is different for every single facility. When we came up with the sole clean process We had to really make it to where it is really individual for every one of these different companies They have a different number of people, they have a different timing that they go off, so forth and so on. So within these two menu screens, what we did is be able to go off, we can change the system to go off and apply more of the sanitizer directly to the pad based on the number of events, based on a number of time post an event. Or in set times within our CleanTech® scheduler. That is something very new for us where you can set four individual times. So if you have a shift that starts at 6 a.m., you may want to turn this on at 5:30, let it prime up, get ready for that staff to come in right now. If they come back to break and they're coming back to break, let's say 45 minutes, you're telling it to turn on right before that to make sure same with after lunch, so forth and so on.
Paul Barnhill: Okay. So you have that customizable event that can go as well as then customizable run times This is super critical. Do you have a high volume people like that one customer showed that's handling a thousand people. We want to be able to adapt to them and be able to make sure that we're adapting and sanitizing their footwear. The same as everybody else and back to that data that we did, as well as that plant that handles maybe just 20 staff members. So we want to be able to make it customizable and that's this case, this built into EVO has given us the capability of doing that. Yeah, and our team will work with you if the soul clean is something you want to decide, which option is best for you.
Will Eaton: If you're an existing customer, the scheduler is a new feature, we'll bring it to you shortly. Like Paul mentioned, it's exciting. You can actually have the pan prime up if your shift starts at 6, 5:30. If you program it, the system will be ready for you, be ready for your staff. There'll be sanitizer in the pans, the first person walking up to it will be stepping in sanitizer and getting that event. Super exciting.
Will Eaton: All right, it's time for live demo. So we're gonna walk through our EVO one station right behind us. Excuse the camera work if it might be a little bumpy, but we'll do our best to make sure no one gets seasick.
Will Eaton: Alright, so we're standing here with an EVO one. This EVO one is equipped with our sole clean footwear enhancement that Paul went through the clinical validation on. This isn't a webinar about handwashing, but I've got to talk about it because it's part of the 12 seconds of contact time.
So if you're not familiar with the Meritech handwashing station, it's 100 percent automated, 100 percent touch free. As soon as your hands go in, it triggers a photo eye, which will start that 12 second wash cycle. Inside are cylinders that will rotate around your hand. There's 20 nozzles inside of each cylinder.
The nozzle started your wrist work to the front and back of your hand. We even have nozzles that point up at your fingertips, like at your fingertips and in between your fingers. This is clinically validated over 50 studies on the hand washer itself, and this is consistency.
Will Eaton: So I'll initiate a hand wash cycle right here. You'll see the spinning cylinders and the water spinning around. We have the cycle a hundred percent automated.
Paul Barnhill: The screen guides you to how in the process. This is going what we want to show this and we've got this set up for it to prime the Sole Clean after every single event.
Normally, it's customizable every from 1 event to 10 events, but what will is going to show you right now is a priming event, something you can initiate should you need to add more fluid so you can see that out of these 2 nozzles, we're injecting it right at the front. The toe ends up usually about there and it's saturating this pad to where when you put your finger on it, you can see that is, that the Sanifect D2 or the sanitizer directly in it. We're getting the soles of the shoe every time. And then after every single event, again, as we've got it programmed, It will go off for just a few seconds to replenish that pan But typically that's somewhere between five and ten uses before it replenishes itself depending again that customizable need for each individual plant.
Will Eaton: The great thing when you talk about a dry environment, this isn't a production plant We're actually in our demo orders office and we have carpet here, but if this was a concrete floor And I stood on the pad, you'll see the moisture in the bottom of my feet. If I was to take a few steps onto concrete, you'll see a few wet footprints, and since we're 50 percent IPA, it'll start evaporating. Almost immediately.
Paul Barnhill: Yeah, it's totally gone typically within that 15 to 20 seconds as you track in as people are walking through That is going to track away and that will go in and that's what lends itself to being that again low moisture or for dry areas.
Will Eaton: Yep And the last thing we'll show really quick just on the virtual demo is here is the Sanifect D2 on a stand next to the station. Also can be you know mounted on a wall if need be a lot of times We just put it in the stand next to the station So that is what's going to be pulling the Sanifect.
Will Eaton: Onto the pad for you that we just showed on the prime 100 automated so that is hands down our most popular recommendation for you know a dry environment We talked about how quickly it evaporates the effectiveness is super hard to beat the four log reduction that Paul showed you don't need a floor drain Or any type of drainage you know We do recommend changing out, the mats. We have all the cleaning maintenance, recommendations in the owner's guide as well. But that's our most popular option.
Paul Barnhill: It's super simple to clean. It's not very complicated if you do a clean out of place operation or something like that You want to do with it the mats and pads are really easy to change out, should they start to wear in time and they will wear in time. The two cutouts really are to guide the staff members exactly where they should be standing that's super important to make sure that they're all getting that consistent effect every single time and it's easy to wash your hands and sanitize your feet at the same time allowing that contact time. That's super important to get that contact time, allow it to do its job, and then let it naturally evaporate away as they walk on to do the rest of the shift of their job.
Will Eaton: Yep. So that's our virtual demo. Yep. Walking everybody through the EVO One with the Sole Clean Enhancement. We'd love to turn it to a Q&A session. We'll bring our little chairs back, Paul. Nothing's off the table for the Q&A session. If you want to see different parts of the equipment, we're happy to open it up show things, talk about footwear programs, talk about case studies, bring it on. We're excited to have this conversation.
Jason Brill: Great. Thanks for the presentation and the demo. First off we have this is a really interesting question. I'm glad that this was asked. How does the handwashing handle employees with any skin conditions?
Paul Barnhill:There's lots of different skin conditions it depends. That's a, that's a little bit of a loaded, I hate to say a loaded question, but It is very gentle on the skin, because first of all, when you wash your hands Your skin is abrasive to each other, you are really pulling on those top layers, epidermal layers, and that can be aggressive to the skin and so forth.
It is gentler, we are using those 40 nozzles to go in and do that. We have done a lot of work on our Ultra Pure. UPX chemical that is directly in this. The EVO station is using exactly one milliliter of that mixed in. It's giving you approximately 200 parts per million of that washing and sanitizing and the EVO station is also giving you a very potable water rinse. to be able to do that. So it is very gentle. We do design all of our system when it comes to hand hygiene, do lots of hand hygiene events because we know they are doing that every single day of the plant.
Will Eaton: Yeah. And with the safety use aspect of it as well. One place you will find the Meritech systems. I know we're talking food processing, food packaging here, but we're on every Disney cruise ship at the entrance of the kids clubs. So hundreds and hundreds of kids wash their hands with the Meritech hygiene solution on a Meritech system daily as they're on a magical cruise ship, cruising around.
Jason Brill: Going back to the question of validation when using the systems, is it possible to get for the users to get. Copies of the validation so that they can show their auditors.
Paul Barnhill: Absolutely. 100%. We have the full blown studies that we offer to some people that are like the science geek nerds like me. Go us. Just because it's super important to be able to understand exactly how did you accomplish those results. It's really difficult in a webinar like this to really get into the nitty gritty of exactly how did we come up with that data. We also have a summary. And that's a great document to present to our plant managers, so forth as well. And let people really have that conversation of knowing that, but we're more than welcome to show that.
Will Eaton: And we're really big on the customer experience. If you're a customer of Meritech, you get an owner's manual, right? If you're like me, you don't read them. But we have a digital owner's guide, it's an online digital owner's guide. It has manuals. It actually has links to the validation studies. It has like our compliance packet. Anything an auditor would want to see is within your digital owner's guide. If you're a current MeritecH customer and you don't have access to that one, let us know. We'll send it to you immediately.
Paul Barnhill: We also have the hygiene toolbox.
Will Eaton: We sure do.
Paul Barnhill: As well, which is really A six part series that really helps guide people in understanding all aspects when it comes to employee hygiene, which touches on the hands, touches on footwear, touches on place, design of a hygiene zone, the culture of hygiene zone in the culture of hygiene in general. So those are really good assets that our customers can always get.
Jason Brill: For the for the shoe washing for the shoe and the foot hygiene, how frequently do the pads need to be replaced?
Will Eaton: Yeah. It really depends on the usage, right? A low throughput where you might have 10 to 20 employees, I always recommend having an extra set of the felt pads, right?
So you have, you can take one out, clean it, put the clean one in. You're always swapping in and out. Very different from, a thousand employees going through verse 10 employees going through. So that's something we would recommend and be able to, guide the customer at a replacement time. But the low throughputs, they last a very long time.
Paul Barnhill: Yeah. I mean that the customer referred to earlier with about that thousand people throughput, I think honestly, they're only changing them about once a month, I would say. And that's a lot. You think about that's 6,000 events a day, right? Realistically. So that's a lot of use, but again, it also is, depends on how the people are as well.
Jason Brill: As far as the hand washing, what's the frequency of changing the water?
Paul Barnhill: he water is fresh every single time, and so only using six tenths of a gallon of water when we wash. So it's plumbed to your facility, hot and cold water, standard drain, standard electrical outlets. So all your utilities are connected directly to it. And it's only using that six tenths of a gallon. So there's really no water change. The hygiene solution inside is a cartridge and that cartridge has to be changed every 2000 events for hand washing or there is a Self Clean cartridge which cleans the system and that lasts you approximately too much So this is a cartridge that is in there with the hygiene fluid That automatically doses in that one mil at the right time during that cycle to be that 200 parts per mil 2000 hand washes.
Jason Brill: For the shoe cleaner, How clean do these shoe soles need to be sanitized. For example, if you have product in the threads of your shoes, like cheese or chocolate.
Paul Barnhill: Yeah. So that's a really good question. And you really, and I always give the same answer. You really need to remove these things first, your proteins, your soils, anything like that, because we're really wanting to sanitize the footwear. We have to remove these things because you can't sanitize them any or Pathogens can be underneath them. And that's a great thing where, again, Mr. Eaton talked about, you can use something to remove debris and soils and then further sanitize it before entering that plant. And I think that's super critical that, again, this goes back to that three piece, so that we can really totally understand, okay, what does that process look like, so that we make sure that we have the right recommendation. Making food is messy and we don't want that mess in some other place, but we don't want it back in. And again, is these street shoes, are these plant shoes, is it a production debris that's coming in, or is it an outside debris coming in? That's what we have to figure out. But yes, highly recommend removing that soil first.
Will Eaton: Yeah, and if it's chocolate or cheese in that scenario, that's happening in production. That scrub out scenario, we showed that picture of the boot scrubber on the way out. Yeah. It's great to address those production debris, exiting. And like we said, coming up with the footwear program, there's not the one size fits all. So then if we're talking about debris that could have come from outside on a street shoe, that's very different than, getting production debris off on exit. So yeah, great question.
Jason Brill: As far as the equipment itself and cleaning the equipment what's involved on a sort of a maintenance side of things?
Paul Barnhill: So the EVO One or the EVO Three, they are actually self cleaning. Every 24 hours, internally, this system is going to turn on a self cleaning cycle. We're going to run about 2,500 parts per million of quat directly through the cylinders, clean the cylinder, the basin, the machine itself, through that plumbing tree, all the way up and out. As soon as that self clean cycle kicks on, which is time, and I normally set them for 3 or 4 a.m. in the morning. That way when people aren't really around, this thing is cleaning on its own. It has a big warning so people can't get into it. If you try to get into it, it shuts itself down.
Paul Barnhill: The exterior of the system, again, depending on your environment, that just needs exterior wiping down and cleaning. So a very quick process, no different than you would do a hand sink, and takes you literally less than five minutes. Now, the footwear pan, depending on what you're doing, that takes maybe a little bit more and again, depends on the uses that you have. You are putting in there a sanitizer, so pretty well limited, but you do want to deal with any, outside biofilms that could build up on the ramps or those things and wiping that down, sanitizing it And just like Mr. Eaton had said, having those mats that you can swap in and out really helps that process. But again, sanitizing this pan, it can be done COP. It could be done CIP and what you can do with that is, is literally five, ten minutes, and you're done. But the frequency depends on that uses and that environment.
Paul Barnhill: So some plants, they may be doing it daily, part of their normal daily routine clean because you really need to clean your hygiene zone if your hygiene zone is going to keep your people clean. So that's super critical. Don't forget to clean your hygiene zone. And so you can build it into that frequency. So that's again where we really want to ask a lot of questions and learn through that 3P process. What is it you're doing today? Okay, and why are you doing it this way to understand? It's not always ours to say, hey, you got to do it this way and that's the way it is. Yeah, not the way it works.
Will Eaton: You got to figure out what's working in your system And we do provide once again a digital owner's guide. We provide daily weekly monthly quarterly cleaning recommendations down to the T, So if anyone, you know wants to double check and have a reference point we have that available.
Paul Barnhill: And if you have something unique ask us challenges.
Will Eaton: Yeah, we'll learn
Jason Brill: here's one maybe along the same lines, with the shoe cleaner. You know with heavy amounts of flour or dust or particulates in the air, maybe You clog or gum up those mats and how would you manage that situation if that were to happen?
Paul Barnhill: So that one is, powders and things like that are always a little bit of a challenge, especially those things that, that tend to really collect when they have some type of moisture.
It really doesn't matter what kind of moisture they have and so forth. They tend to gum up and debris up. And I think that photo that Will showed, the best example, is where you're actually removing those production debris, but you're then sanitizing when you come back into that facility. And that's good for a couple different reasons. The reason for that is one, if it's already in production, let's leave it in production. We don't want to track it to the front office. We don't want to track it to the break rooms or other areas we're sanitizing. But then we want to make sure that we're sanitizing on that inlet. And there's lots of different ways that can be done. There's no way I could give a, like a specific number of how long that will last. It depends on what that is.
Will Eaton: It does depend on where the station will be placed, the times you're going to get the flowers and the pans, if the station's in production a lot of times if it's in a GMP zone you're going to be safe from that type of debris.
But if it is in production, if that's where our customer wants it, then we'll work with the sanitation team and take a look at how often. The pad needs to be changed. And that might be a scenario where you might need to buy five or six, and where you might be changing it out after every shift, ideally, we wouldn't want that, ideally the point of having automated hygiene equipment. And so your sanitation team can be like, awesome. We don't have to fill up boot baths. We're not throwing dry quad everywhere. But in those types of scenarios, yes, you might need to change the mats a little bit more frequently.
Paul Barnhill: And the big thing there is also, what are you doing today? You know before you so that we can understand exactly what are you doing today? Is this working is it's not working and then how do we adapt to it to make sure that we're still achieving? Again, I think it will hit it on perfectly. What are your goals? Absolutely.
Jason Brill: Another question is a two parter what is the average amount of water consumed in one hand wash? Is it more or less than a manual hand wash and then part two? What is the log reduction for S Aureus as per validation?
Paul Barnhill: So let's get into the first one here. I think it's a little, and then I'll have to have you repeat the second one. I may not have heard all of it. So the water consumption is approximately 60%. Tenths of a gallon of water and so forth used at every CleanTech® station, okay?
How much water is used in a manual hand washing comparative it that is a giant unknown If you know it, please let me know i've been trying to understand this for 30 some years. It's a huge variable but one of the challenges with a manual sink is how much of that is actually used and how much of that is waste.
Obviously, in food manufacturing, we have all no touch faucets, so forth and so on. The food codes state that faucet has to be uninterrupted and flowing if it's an electric guy for at least 20 seconds. A majority of these are still either knee operated or foot operated sinks. My experience has shown that when these people come up to wash, they step on that foot pedal or knee pedal and that water just flows. I understand a lot of maintenance guys don't like challenges with faucets and sinks that break. So one of the first things they do is they take off the faucet aerators because it creates clogs. And so those sinks are free flowing. So I've been in plants where they're using very little water. In fact, not enough to really what I consider wash well manually. And I've been in other plants like you're really consuming a couple gallons of water. But the challenge still there with any type of manual hand washing scenario is there is a certain portion of that water, approximately 60 percent of it, that is never used to wash your hands.
That's one advantage of a CleanTech®,100 percent of that water is coming in contact with that hand and used to wash that hand. Okay. Now, can you repeat second?
Jason Brill: Yeah. So second part was the log reduction for Staphylococcus aureus as per validation.
Paul Barnhill: Okay. So we don't have that on directly human skin or directly on footwear sanitizing. I think we can definitely figure out how we could do something for footwear. Not one we're asked a lot about Staphylococcus aureus. That's a really challenging. pathogen. It's a resident pathogen that you're dealing with, and the reductions are hard because it's a growing, it's like staphylococcus epidermis. Staphylococcus aureus exists a lot within our nose that's one of the transmission points, that happens very frequently. And I don't think I've actually applied a large number to That one, all of our hand hygiene data, the 50 plus studies that Will has talked about really have been what can we apply safely to human skin show what that baseline is and what is that law reduction again, following the ASTM 1174 standards, super critical, or a lot of people may know it as the glove juice standard.
So we haven't studied that one a whole lot. We've done the E. coli's, we've done Serratum arcessions, Norovirus, which is super critical because we really want to focus on those that are very prominent and challenging. Most of the pathogens are modality. Okay, if there's one thing that Meritech talks about is not really about what the kill is, But what that removal is and that's what's super critical.
So when we're sitting there saying we're giving you a 99.9%, that's a removal. So it's all of this together. We're not talking about just the the solution by itself. We're not talking just put the hand washer, but that combination thereof of creating that event. Again, one of the things that we have is within that digital owner's guide access to all of these summaries, as well as then a way that you can actually request the actual data from the third party laboratory.
Jason Brill: As far as the EVO station, are the solutions used approved for organic facilities?
Paul Barnhill: That's a real challenging one because realistically there's very few, maybe even none that are really, organic. But here's Meritech's position in mind personally for the last number of years, one of the things that we're doing when we're washing is we're giving a potable water rinse. That is super critical, we're not leaving anything behind that then can be a cross contamination event. And so when does that? Really need to be an organic proof. This is not coming in contact with product. It's not coming in contact With that it's separate from that It's not used to you know in either the process or the growing or the manufacturing of that product.
Will Eaton: No, I agree. It's a tough. Yeah, I mean You know more of the organic from what we've seen. It is the process the manufacturing how it's done you know i've answered this the same way Paul did is you know with that particle rinse there really is no difference there's nothing left on your hands that would be an issue. So are we in organic facilities? Yes, for sure.
Jason Brill: We have another question. Hand drying is a critical piece of hand hygiene. Where does the employee do that, especially with the turnstile format?
Will Eaton: Yeah, great question. Yeah, so the turnstile, you don't need to use your hands, right? You can actually just hip your way through it. But usually what we always recommend is a paper towel dry. Okay. You can grab that paper towel, dry your hands and just walk through the turnstile. You do not need to use your hands to initiate the turnstile.
Jason Brill: Speaking of the turnstile, I had another question about that. Do you offer it as a package or is it something that the facility would have to install on their own?
Will Eaton: We absolutely offer it as a package. We are an automated hand washing manufacturer, not a turnstile manufacturer. So it's something we source. If customers do have a door or a turnstile or something they want the CleanTech® station to initiate We've done that before with a control basically The system's sending a signal to a magnetic door or something like that We can work with customers on a custom solution, but we do offer the turnstile as a package
Paul Barnhill: One of the other things if I can add on here Is one of the value added services with Meritech is really this hygiene consulting.
We have lots of experts in hygiene consulting. All of our people that are outside here know that they have resources, both external and internal. And one of the things that we do often is design out hygiene zones for companies. And we look at those things of how are you moving those people through and what is the best mix of turnstiles? What is the right great guiding or railing that kind of pushes people through it depends on what that is. That is a value added service with Meritech that we help a lot of companies with as well as then, really the walkthroughs that our team does a lot just to look at what is it you're doing today. And how can we help you achieve your goals?
Jason Brill: So we had two questions for further demonstrations if you guys are up for it with the five, five minutes we have left. So we had one question that asked, To show how to clean a pad and then we had one that asked for a demonstration of the hand wash station so we can see how moist your hands are once the cycle is completed.
Will Eaton: Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that one first.
Paul Barnhill: let's do the pad first then we can wash our hands close the pad done.
Paul Barnhill: So this is your pad. This is your top guide pad. This comes right out the top, so that can go off. That can be hosed off. This is just really to keep it down as well as in keeping center. This is really down in here. It's moist. It's sticky. It's stuck to the bottom. But this is just to guide people where to put their feet.
The pad in itself is right here and so this is the pad it comes out It's got a weighted bottom on the bottom side and it's rough and the top is almost like a very hard felt surface. It's not absorbed the material You can feel the weight of it, but it's not dripping off. You really want it to be damp And but not soaking and dripping and then bottom of this is an undulated mat. We have this rubber mat again It pops out just like this mat and then what this does is it helps grip this to keep it from wanting to slide around all three of these mats and then below that is stainless steel, all three of these mats can be taken out. They can clean out of place and hose them down Hang them up to dry if you want to and then the next day you can put them back. As they start to wear and tear, all three can wear and tear, but mainly you're replacing this felt mat And then you have spares on hand and you just get into a routine. So that's super critical again You have a new process i'm doing this the same way every time then if something is not quite working, you can make changes to that process if it was working continue doing it.
Will Eaton: You should probably wash your hands.
Paul Barnhill: I might wash my hands.
Paul Barnhill: So when washing your hands, and I'll try to get over here. So when I go in, I really want to have my hands just like this. So if you can see that I'm literally like I'm grabbing a doorknob and so forth. And I'm focusing on the top layer of nozzles right here at my wrist. So I put my hands in, I'm putting them in the center, I'm not resting on them. The top layer of those nozzles right at my wrist, my hands are cupped. It takes 12 seconds. First few seconds, it's mixing some water, rinse it off, then it mixes the solution with the water to wash and sanitize, then it rinses it off again.
Paul Barnhill: I flick my hand one, two, three times, I come out. I got a couple drips from that, I transition to the paper towel, and I'm ready to go. That's it. So you are moist you are wet and you've washed your hands and then again we recommend paper towel more so than we do air dryers The reason for that is you're less likely to cross contaminate with this event. This is 100% recyclable and it keeps people moving in the right direction. So you get that throughput, anytime you add a dryer or something like that. You really do slow the system down a lot of times when Plants are designed out and so forth. They want that hand that paper towel right above the sink We don't recommend that for a couple reasons one. It diminishes throughput two It makes your CleanTech® Station a little bit more messy. But if you can transition them to where you have typically a hand sink a hand dryer you have a Trash can below it So forth, you're catching those drips, you keeping your area cleaner because you can't really have a really clean hygiene zone and expect your people to be clean too.
So design it to where you can make it a very clean process. So
Jason Brill: Will and Paul, thanks so much for the presentation. We're just about out of time. We do still have some questions. So what we'll do with your questions is we'll send those over to Paul and Will so that they can answer them. And then we will, we'll get those answers back. Get those answers back to you. But I want to thank you both for the presentation today. It was really great. The demonstrations are so great to actually see these things in action. So we really appreciate that. Thank you to Meritech for today's presentation. We hope you all learned as much as we did and thank you all for joining us.
Will and Paul: Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Bye guys.
