In light of Covid-19 is anyone making face masks mandatory in their facilities? Can this be optional?
We have a small facility and a lot of workers, so we opted to make it mandatory as we have limited options on social distancing. We also allow home-made masks, provided they don't contribute to a food safety hazard. (No buttons, fraying, must be laundered every day, etc.). I wrote up a risk assessment of the masks, and from that did the following: Updated GMPs, added a line item to every pre-shift meeting (done weekly) to reminder workers to sanitize their hands if they touch or adjust their masks, and also have weekly reminders that if masks have frays they must be trimmed or replaced. (Amongst other things.) I've also stated the purpose of the masks over the course of several shift meetings - that the objective is to help reduce the spread if someone unknowingly has the virus, but the masks aren't intended to keep someone from getting sick. Of course, also reinforced the fact of "If you are feeling sick at all, including gastro, stay home". As it's not a risk to our food, our main concern really is using as many tools as we have to keep our workers from getting ill (and taking it home to their families).
We are a bakery, however - and summer is around the corner, so how this translates into the heat is yet to be seen. (We do have air conditioning, but it's fighting the ovens in the summer and still gets plenty hot). We are keeping our crisis management plan open and updated and reevaluating about every week or two.