Environmental monitoring - zoning in raw material area

Hi all,

We're working on our environmental monitoring program and wonder how we shall define our zones.

There are the 4 "standard" zones:

I'd say technically anything product contact is zone 1, but you could divy it up like:   Zone 1 is preheat treatment contact surfaces, zone 1A is post heat treatment, zone 1B is post whatever else?   I don't know your exact process, but that's what I'd do if you can make it work for you.   But yeah, in my mind everything product contact is still zone 1 as far as how you define your swabbing process.

If you're converting raw commodities into RTE or shelf stable foods with a thermal lethality, I wouldn't expect to see much environmental monitoring before the lethality process.  Most raw commodities are presumed positive for a variety of things, and that's why you're cooking it.

like GM stated many plants will not do envirnmental monitoring prior to letality.  

I personnaly see the benefit in doing them.   Find it, get rid of it.   Also provides historic data of possible sources that may be transfered to post lethality areas.  

Like Dale state 1A & 1B or 1 Post & 1 Pre.  However you want to designate it.   I do think its wise to diferenciate.  

Just for clarity, I only swab anything after my sanitation SOP has been run....  so pre lethality/post lethality shouldn't matter if you swab that way.  I'm verifying my sanitation procedures when I swab.  My place is a different animal though, very low risk, non RTE items, etc, so you gotta do you...

Thank you all for valuable input!

I think we have decided to reduce the environmental monitoring in our raw material area to a minimum during production since it is expected to find "something" in our raw material. Maybe indicator bacteria on a few places for direct contact.

We do swab everything after cleaning so definition of zones was more needed for our sampling during production.

a few thoughts - hopefully they address your questions/are helpful.

-Zones 1 through 4 are are not quite the same as Raw vs. RTE zones. Both your raw and ready to eat areas of the facility will each have zone 1/2/3 surfaces. 

-while your EMP may not need to focus on the raw areas for the reasons others have advised on above, it really depends on the degree of separation you have between raw and RTE, along with hurdles to minimize any instances of cross-contamination.