Is it possible to reduce the frequency of swabbing without compromising food safety?

Hi

Please advise......

I have recently started a new position in High Care fruit packing and I am looking at the Micro schedule and I believe we are doing to much for example we are swabbing 44 points weekly for listeria, 25 places ever week for hygiene and 15 places every week monthly swabbing. Now for me surely we could go down to random swabbing as long as i cover off all areas monthly as this is a massive cost .

What's your thoughts

How big is the facility? What are your results of swabbing? 

I suggest you perform a risk analysis based on GMPs, traffic flow, size of your processing area, historical data of COAs and swabs, and your sanitation findings. I did this for a company and was able to reduce their listeria swabbing by 35%. You could also composite an area with multiple swabs in the same location and test individually if that composite were to test positive.

This isn't random swabbing with so few locations? 

Granted I work in a large facility, with hundreds of specific pre-operational swabbing locations, with around 50 randomly being selected per week. And we also do 50 monthly efficacy swabs to verify the effectiveness of laundering and stuff like that.

For example, one of our grinders will have a swabbing locations on the auger, the auger lid, the blender walls, the blender paddles, the grinding screw, the plates/parts, the retention hopper etc etc instead of just a location named "grinder".

Even things like mesh gloves, knife blades, aprons, anything food contact/could be food contact is its own swab location.

The factory is not to big at all - Results are very good 

I'm really just asking if I can do 10 swabs one month, 10 swabs another month of different items etc etc 

As long as you can support it and answer the auditor that no listeria positive results are not due to lack of swabbing

I'm really just asking if I can do 10 swabs one month, 10 swabs another month of different items etc etc 

If your history supports the move it can certainly be done.  We have a small 'high risk' facility with very good environmental testing history, and do less than 10 Listeria swabs per month for it.  There's still plenty of daily general sanitation related testing, and micros by lot for finished goods.

If your history supports the move it can certainly be done.  We have a small 'high risk' facility with very good environmental testing history, and do less than 10 Listeria swabs per month for it.  There's still plenty of daily general sanitation related testing, and micros by lot for finished goods.

Beat me to it.  OP, you're going to need to be able to defend any choice to reduce your monitoring, so I'd start with writing up a full review of your results over the past year.  If there's no concerning trends, no hot spots that consistently flare up, you're in a good place to do so.  I'd associate the good micro results with a review of sanitation deficiencies, also showing the sanitation program is in control and operating as intended.

Now as to how many you can get away with reducing it to...  Different can of worms.  44 a week comes to 176-220 a month.  Going to 10 would be a hard sell.  How many spots do you have registered in your program?  How often is each registered spot being tested in any given month?  You'll possibly want to consider your zoning into the updated frequencies, depending on your process. 

I'm currently in a corporate FSQA role over 8 different fresh cut fruit and veg plants, and our plants rotate through a list of established listeria points.  They pull listeria swabs weekly: each point is tested at least once per month, though there is overlap to make sure the rooms and general areas are tested each week (ex: floor in a cutting room might have 8 separate points on the floor, and they'll hit two different once each week).  Our plan details having 50% of the swabs come from the zone 2 sites, the rest spread amongst zones 3-4, and include roughly 10 discretionary random swabs per month to seek issues where we might not have something on a list.  Plants vary a fair bit in size, but listeria swabs range from 160 to 230 per month based on plant size.

Hi Astro ;) 

I believe you should have a site map for Listeria to see NC`s, hot spots and general site history. 

if yes, then you can easily navigate your reduction using risk assessment. Be careful with justification and be aware, this is not an easy job to do.

As long as directors love to see reduction in cost, your food safety auditors will destroy your risk assessment if the justification is not strong enough. 

good luck !

;)