We are a "dry" mix manufacturer and one major item we run contains fats in the form of palm oil and some other hard to remove ingredients such as soy and egg.
We have validated that our procedure removes allergens, but upon getting a rinse water sample I believe that when we run this one particular set of products with fats, soy and egg we may have some of the fats remaining on the mixers. Our ATP and allergen swabs all come back good, again that doesn't tell me much about fats.
Our procedure is to use a Chlorinated Foaming Cleaner that sits on the surface for minimum of 15 minutes, a brush is used on corners to remove buildup, and then it is rinsed, and then sanitized.
I'm worried though that this rinse and foam isn't good enough. They have brushes for cleaning, but they can't possibly reach down into the mixers like they need to. I'm started to suspect that we need to do more scrubbing of the mixers, including deep scrubbing of the sides and blades.
Problem is that we have some push-back from upper level employees saying that bristles will come off in the mixer contaminating the product. My argument was that 1- they rinse after so that shouldn't be an issue. 2- we buy from the industry leader of brush suppliers and they are very high quality. 3- brushing during cleaning/sanitation is a standard practice and I have literally never heard of a bristle being found in product as a complaint.
I've argued that brushed used in cleaning is pretty industry standard, again I get push back saying that we are a dry manufacturer, so we shouldn't even have to wet clean. Again I bring up the fats, and then we go right back to bristles in product.
Am I making up brushes in cleaning/sanitizing being an industry standard practice? I've not pushed the topic bc like I said we get good swab results, but as I dig deeper into our programs I am finding some gaps.
Help, please.