Elevate your HACCP plan with a robust personal hygiene strategy, where handwashing is a key component. Meritech's Automated Handwashing Equipment integrates into any HACCP-based hygiene program, offering ultimate peace of mind. The Automated Handwashing Stations enhance efficiency at critical control points, ensure compliance, simplify corrective actions, and streamline record-keeping with handwashing compliance data.
Want to learn more about how Automated Handwashing Stations can fit int your facility's HACCP handwashing program? Request a hygiene zone consultation and one of our hygiene experts will be happy to assist!
1. Conduct a Hazard Analysis Hazard analysis is the first step of any HACCP handwashing plan, it is important to know where potential risks to food products are in your facility. The main hazard related to handwashing and personal hygiene is the risk of an employee or visitor entering the production zone with contaminated hands and touching products, potentially contaminating the product. |
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7. Establish Record Keeping Procedures The last, but not least important, step is record-keeping - a complete documentation of the HACCP plan and procedures. The records help you to analyze any possible problem areas and show how well you have been doing at preventing hazards and ensure safe product for your customers. |
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2. Identify Critical Control Points The critical control point in a HACCP plan is where the hazard is managed to ensure food safety. For handwashing, this is at the entrances and exits of production areas, where employees and visitors must wash their hands to remove pathogens before entering an area with RTE food. |
6. Establish Verification Procedures Periodically, a review is needed to verify if all established steps in your process are operating according to the plan. This may include a review of the handwashing records, equipment maintenance, or checking that the handwashing procedures have their intended effect. The best way to verify that handwashing is removing the harmful pathogens is by ATP testing. To learn more about how to conduct and analyze an ATP test, visit our downloadable ATP testing guide here. |
3. Establish Critical Limits Critical limits in a HACCP plan is the correct procedure for addressing the hazards in the critical control points. The critical limit for handwashing should be to reduce the amount of harmful pathogens on employee and visitors hands to as close to zero as possible before entering the production area. This is limit is met by having every person entering production conduct a thorough hand wash. |
5. Establish Corrective Actions When a critical control point is being observed not complying with a critical limit, corrective actions must be taken. If proper handwashing procedures have not been observed, the corrective actions could be retraining employees on handwashing processes or educating employees and visitors on the importance of handwashing in supplying customers with safe food products. For facilities with Automated Hygiene equipment, the stations are easy to use making employee training and any necessary corrective actions simple. For additional support with training, download the HACCP-Based Automated Handwashing SOP Resource. |
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4. Monitor Critical Control Points Monitoring critical control points is essential in a HACCP handwashing plan to ensure that employees are washing their hands every time they enter and exit production. For a manual sink, designating a staff member to observe that employees and visitors are washing their hands is the best way to monitor the critical control point. CleanTech® EVO Automated Handwashing Stations, have hygiene compliance data that can be accessed to monitor handwashing station use, allowing facilities to not have a designated hand wash monitoring staff member. |
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.
Want to learn more about what Automated Hygiene Equipment is best for your facility? Take our product selection quiz.
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 product.
Learn more about the clinical efficacy of Automated Hygiene Equipment.
HACCP handwashing corrective actions are retraining employees who are observed not preforming proper hand washes before entering production. With a traditional hand wash it can be tricky to ensure that every employee is preforming the correct steps in a manual hand wash, but with automation it is as simple as placing hands in the cylinders and letting the system preform the hand wash.
Download our Automated Hygiene HACCP Based SOP to keep as a resource for training and educating employees on proper handwashing practices.
The final and most crucial step in a HACCP handwashing procedure is record keeping. 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 enables facility's to monitor handwashing uses and retain data to protect themselves from audits.
Learn more about the full range of Automated Handwashing features.
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