Microbe limit for working clothes in food manufacturing

Dear all,

To comply BRC, my company sent operators' uniform to external laundry. I understand that the purpose doing so is to avoid cross-contamination. However, how are we to ensure laundered clothes are well cleaned? Do i need to do swab test on laundered clothes and what is the microbe limit that i can apply in this case (if swab test is necessary)? Any BRC certified company encounter this problem before and has solution? Thanks for help

Dear all,

To comply BRC, my company sent operators' uniform to external laundry. I understand that the purpose doing so is to avoid cross-contamination. However, how are we to ensure laundered clothes are well cleaned? Do i need to do swab test on laundered clothes and what is the microbe limit that i can apply in this case (if swab test is necessary)? Any BRC certified company encounter this problem before and has solution? Thanks for help

How do other members check workers overalls for cleanliness?

Do you use swabbing?

Other methods?

Regards,
Simon

How do other members check workers overalls for cleanliness?

Do you use swabbing?

Other methods?

Regards,
Simon

There is no clause in the BRC that stipulates swabbing clothes.

However, the Tesco COP does, but it does not give you limits. It also wants you to swab footwear.


I swab coats for tvc (less than 100cfu) and footwear for listeria (absent)

caz x

Dear Agnes,

If you are prepared to do some searching, there is a link in one of the several threads on this topic here to a website of a commercial clothes cleaning service which offers a quite detailed technical answer to yr query and explains how their procedure complies with the requirements. HACCP type flow analysis from memory.

Rgds / Charles.C

How do other members check workers overalls for cleanliness?

Do you use swabbing?

Other methods?

Regards,
Simon

Dear Simon,

We check workers cleanliness visually.E.g. their fingernails, hair, any fake eyelashes, ring or acessories and etc.

Regards,
Agnes

There is no clause in the BRC that stipulates swabbing clothes.

However, the Tesco COP does, but it does not give you limits. It also wants you to swab footwear.


I swab coats for tvc (less than 100cfu) and footwear for listeria (absent)

caz x

We did footwear for listeria too. May i know what is tvc? Or you actually mean tpc (Total Plate Count)? Do you think i shall test yeast & mould, Coliform and Staphylococcus aureus too? What is the interval time (monthly, bi-annually or annually) that you carry out coat swab?

Regards,
Agnes

Dear Agnes,

If you are prepared to do some searching, there is a link in one of the several threads on this topic here to a website of a commercial clothes cleaning service which offers a quite detailed technical answer to yr query and explains how their procedure complies with the requirements. HACCP type flow analysis from memory.

Rgds / Charles.C

Dear Charles,

i searched this topic but couldn't find any link that you mentioned. Do you mind to post the link up here?

BRC Global Standard Iss 5

7.5.4 Laundering of protective clothing shall take place in-house using defined and verified criteria to validate the effectiveness of the laundering process, or by an approved contracted and audited laundry. The effectiveness of cleaning shall be monitored.

To monitor the effectiveness of laundry cleaning, we do a visual inspection of garment deliveries every 2 weeks and swab 4 times per year. We include in the visuals, wearing correctly and check for signs of damage. The inspection is done after staff have put on clean garments. Target is <100 cfu/g for TVCs.

Hope this helps

Mike

Dear Agnes,

The relevant item is post 12 in –

http://www.ifsqn.com...?showtopic=5500

(you may also find this thread interesting [contains a very nice laundry audit procedure from Caz] –
http://www.ifsqn.com...?showtopic=2679 )

The link in post 12 works but the relevant material seems to be no longer on the site. Some of it was in my archives (see attachment 01 below) and the same organisation has also posted some related material here –
http://www.foodmanuf...PR~RID~8388.asp

01_aramark_cleaning.PDF   139.65KB   491 downloads

Unfortunately, I hv lost the part with the HACCP flow chart and probably micro. numbers however I did a bit of googling and found attachment 02 which, I think, is quite an impressive document utilising a German standard for evaluating laundries ( especially as related to hospital / food applications). The swab data is in dm squared which I think is more understandable to lab people from 1 dm2 = 100cm2.

02_laundry_evaluation.pdf   43.87KB   558 downloads

A concise summary of the standard’s micro.requirements is included at the end of this also rather nice commercial document –

03_hygiene_assurance_.pdf   1.44MB   573 downloads

I hope the above is useful.

Rgds / Charles.C

There is no need for swabbing of garments, commercial laundries normally use thermal indictor strips which are placed in with the laundry which confirm that when the garments are dried they reach a temperature of over 140 degrees (not entierly sure if it is 140 will have to check up) and so confirm what is effectively a micro kill step, our laundry post these to use as evidence for each batch of garments cleaned. You should visit or audit your laundry provider to understand what they are actually doing. Other laundry problems are washing of non food garments and high risk food garments and so cross contamination as well as needle control as garments are frequently repaired and it is not unheard of for needles to disapper. Hope this helps

Dear JSFB,

Thks yr comments. I presume you meant 140degF. I certainly agree with you that an audit of one’s laundry is a valuable step. I also wonder how many people do it ? From the links/attachments provided above, opinions on the desired minimum process requirements vary considerably as far as micro.reduction is concerned (hv not seen any theoretical justification as yet, maybe the range of inputs is "indescribable"). Would be most interesting to see the validation details of yr laundry’s referred procedure.

It appears that the standard used in my 2nd/3rd attachments does not consider the method you refer as operationally sufficient to validate the overall cleaning process. Or perhaps I should say verify ?

Rgds / Charles.C

There is no need for swabbing of garments, commercial laundries normally use thermal indictor strips which are placed in with the laundry which confirm that when the garments are dried they reach a temperature of over 140 degrees (not entierly sure if it is 140 will have to check up) and so confirm what is effectively a micro kill step, our laundry post these to use as evidence for each batch of garments cleaned. You should visit or audit your laundry provider to understand what they are actually doing. Other laundry problems are washing of non food garments and high risk food garments and so cross contamination as well as needle control as garments are frequently repaired and it is not unheard of for needles to disapper. Hope this helps

Surely the swabbing of garments is good practice to ensure there has not been any other failures in the landry, storage, transport or handling techniques used.

A question. If we audit and approve our suppliers (this could be for anything) and check they have adequate systems and controls in place, and they positively release products that gives us confidence they provide product to specification, right first time, every time. Is there ever a need for me the customer to do random testing.

Surely laundries swab to verify their cleaning process? Why should we do it?

Regards,
Simon

Could not agree more Simon. Charles i will look out an the verifiction details wheni get back to work and send them on.

Regards

James

Hello All -
This is a very timely topic for my situation as we are evaluating going to "in-house" for our garment laundering to save money.
All of the threads have been extremely helpful.

There is an updated version of the .pdf file that Charles.C posted regarding HACCP and Food Industry Garment Laundering.

http://www.aramark-u...PaperSource.pdf

Page 13 of this article gets to the "meat" of the discussion with temperatures and thresholds.

Thanks all for great information!
Tom

 

PS (Charles.C/201121) - for convenience I have attached the file related to above link -

A uniform approach to HACCP,2009.pdf   521.88KB   53 downloads

Dear BooMboom,

Many thks for locating the link.

From a quick look, I think the numerical data provided is identical in both 2006 / 2009 documents. maybe I missed something. The latter does provide a bit closer insight into the overall process. If the 2009 article is correct, it seems rather a pity that no progress on setting official regulatory standards for laundries in USA has been made in the last 3 years. The EC seems to be better in theory since "semi-official" standards do seem to exist although in practice, who knows?

Regretfully, both documents provide no links to any of the quoted validation material, eg CDC, data referred. The promotion aspect of the text is also sometimes a bit over the top, eg

Hygienically clean is defined as “a reduction in microbial counts to a level free of bacteria, viruses and other disease- producing organisms.”

. Nonetheless, it's rare to find any detailed HACCP oriented references so kudos to Aramark for that.

Rgds / Charles.C

Hello, 

I am looking for clothes swabbing to check our overalls once they are back form the laundry, can you recommend any specific swabs /company?pelase?

Kind Regards

aIDA

Hello, 

I am looking for clothes swabbing to check our overalls once they are back form the laundry, can you recommend any specific swabs /company?pelase?

Kind Regards

aIDA

 

See post 9 et seq.

 

IIRC there is also a BRC interpretation regarding minimal laundry process requirements / microbial expectations  posted elsewhere on this Forum. Maybe search a little.

BRC interpretation for  7.4.3:

 

Laundries (both in-house and contracted) must ensure that:

- Dirty and clean clothing is adequately segregated to ensure that recently laundered items are no re-contaminated

- The protective clothing is effectively cleaned (e.g. by the completion of microbiological validation and verification tests)

- Cleaned clothes are protected from contamination until delivered to the site (e.g. through the use of covers or bags)