Air Quality and Cleaning & Sanitation of Food contact Surfaces
Are there any available guidelines/standards or limits for below things?
1) Air quality standard related to the total plate count and Yeast and mould count in the food processing area
2) Limits for Total Plate Count for food contact machines/surfaces after Clean In Place (CIP)
3) Limits for Total plate count for cleaned uniforms
Please help me to clarify above.
Basura,
I'd be interested to know this too. In making our Environmental Monitoring Program, I couldn't find a standard either.
Hi Basura and aaalen,
Just for clarity, environmental microbiological criteria depends industry to industry an horticulture industry's criteria will be different than the infant formula manufacturer or meat industry, same applies to CIP.
However, Environmental microbiological criteria is mainly based mainly on Yeast and Mold counts, however TVC / TPC can be included based on sensitivity of operations.
With regards to CIP and TPC limit also, ideally it shall be less than 50, however you need to do trails and maintain your own industry standard - generally speaking I worked with two sensitive industries and both having different range of CIP micro ranges same applies to personal hygiene (usually it ranges from 100 - 300 CFU)
I have attached 3 files for read, one of them ANZ Compendium for the microbiological criteria for foods includes environmental monitoring too.
Best of luck