Good warehousing practices - kinds of products stored together

Many logistics companies want to develop their business and want to store in a distribution center many kinds of products: food products, food packaging, cleaning chemicals , equipments, even animal feed.
For the chemicals ii is clear that you'll need a different area.
Also you'll need a segregation between raw materials and finished product.
You can not store fresh fish with cheese, this is obvious.

There is a regulation stipulating what kind of food can be stored together and which must be separated?

For example, in my opinion, packed products like sweets, sauces and fresh potatoes in raffia neting can not be stored together. A product like fresh vegetables is a high risk of contamination for the warehouse and for other products ( ground, infestation).
Am I right or am I exagerating?

Does anyone have knowledge / experience of good storage and distribution practice?

Regards,
Simon

I asked and read a lot about this issue. Unfortunately the food safety is not an exact science.

The issues to consider are the condition of the products when received - there can be problems if the vegetables are in poor condition attracting small flies or if the products are contaminated already. Some times there are special storage requirements if they are stored long term such as air movement and avoidance of lightIf they are in good condition, can be adequately segregated, and are stored for a short period before further distribution then it should be OK.

I don't know if adequately segregated means a room for its or it's enough a dedicated area.

Hi, I didn't find something about what you are looking for except for the structural requirements (see Reg. (CE) n° 852/2004 attach II).

But as you correctly wrote you should make a risk analysis for all the possibile contamination (not only microbiological) between the raw materials you are going to storage together (ex: no fish with meet; no meet of cow near poulty one; no food with strong aroma near the flat one, and so on).

Ciao
Mauro

Dear deea,

It’s an interesting OP. Unfortunately the potential scope is enormous, eg there are entire books on this topic, not to forget a BRC standard of storage and distribution.

Just as an illustration, I enclose a minute sample of documents from googling “food warehousing cross-contamination” (163,000 hits).

standards of warehousing.doc   1.26MB   183 downloads

SafeFoodHandling.doc   133.5KB   104 downloads
(my PC noted a damaged table somewhere in the document but i didn't see anything)

fsis meat,poultry,eggs- safety,security of transportation,distribution.pdf   512.05KB   70 downloads

campbells FS manual - SupplyRequirements.pdf   1.22MB   110 downloads
(eg ch.13)
Rgds / Charles.C

Could it also be worth getting a copy of the BRC Standard for food distribution? I am not hugely familiar with it, but I visit a lot of food distribution sites which have achieved that standard. Clearly it may be more than you are looking for in terms of going for an accreditation, but it would certainly give you good targets in terms of best practice on your site.

Cheers, Tom.