Automation is a popular term used across all industries, including food processing. Numerous automated machines can enhance efficiency on the manufacturing floor, but have you thought about how automating hygiene processes can eliminate uncertainty in employee hygiene and achieve clinically proven pathogen elimination? Meritech Automated Hygiene Equipment is an essential addition to any HACCP-based handwashing plan for food processing facilities.
What does a HACCP hand washing procedure look like in food processing?
HACCP hand washing procedures are essential to follow to protect staff and customer health. Each year an estimated 48 million people get sick from food borne illnesses — the most common are Norovirus, Salmonella, Campylobacter and E. coli. It is crucial that all employees and visitors perform thorough handwashing before entering the production area. Educating and training employees on the correct HACCP-based handwashing procedure is essential. We have developed a HACCP-based guide for our Automated Handwashing Stations to help ensure clinically validated compliance.
Download the HACCP-based Automated Handwashing Station SOP here!
What benefits automation can bring to a HACCP hand washing procedure?
Automation can offer numerous advantages across various industries, and automated handwashing stations provide particular benefits to a facility's HACCP hand washing procedure, simplifying and streamlining the process of maintaining personal hygiene for employees and visitors.
Increased efficiency at critical control points
Critical control points in HACCP are areas where the hazard is present and must be controlled. For a HACCP handwashing procedure, the critical control point is production entrances. Automated Handwashing Stations allow employees to quickly pass through theses critical control point entrances by getting a clinically validated hand wash in just 12 seconds and get back to the production areas quickly.
Guaranteed critical control limit compliance
With HACCP handwashing procedures the critical control limit is the actual hand wash, to remove harmful pathogens before entering production. The Automated Handwashing Stations provide an identical, 99.9% pathogen removal hand wash for each user. This provides ultimate peace of mind that each person entering production has clean, safe hands before touching any food product.
Streamlined training and corrective actions
One step of HACCP is establishing corrective actions, with HACCP handwashing procedures this is retraining employees who are observed not preforming proper hand washes before entering production. Ensuring that every employee follows the correct steps in a manual hand wash to eliminate pathogens can be challenging. However, with automation, the process is simplified to placing hands in the cylinders and allowing the system to perform the hand wash. While some initial training is necessary for using an Automated Handwashing Station, once staff and visitors understand the procedure, it becomes very straightforward to use.
Easier record keeping with compliance tracking data
The final and most crucial step in a HACCP handwashing procedure is record keeping. In facilities with manual sinks, a designated employee usually oversees and ensures that employees wash their hands before entering production. Meritech's Automated Hygiene Equipment includes a built-in compliance tracker, providing administrators with data on the number of handwashing events within a specific timeframe. This feature allows a facility to reduce resources spent on staffing a handwashing monitor while maintaining peace of mind.
Learn more about how Automated Hygiene fits into any facility's HACCP handwashing plan here!
