PAA Produce Wash: Visual vs. Recorded Contact Time Requirements

Food Processing Question:

For PAA fresh produce wash : contact time & PAA ppm is important.

If PAA PPM's are monitored (tested) & recorded at frequent intervals through processing could the contact time be a visual responsibility of the handler? (not recorded - but a visually monitored & verified) 

It does not seem realistic to record contact time for manually operations.....

Does contact time have to be recorded for verification. 

ah yep

Since the product requires a PPM AND contact time, how else can you be sure it's effective???

It's just like following a recipe, if you leave something out, it won't turn out as expected

Is your process to wash them in a PAA bath as a batch-wash? Recording the time would be important, like scampi mentions the effectiveness of PAA is based on both ppm and contact time. Both are important and need to be recorded. Simply add a column in your records to have operators record the contact time, and have timers or a clock available in the area so that operators have a means of gauging time.

If your operation is a flume wash, you need to prove that the rate at which produce travels through the flume is slow enough to ensure the contact time required at your ppm paa.

If your operation is a flume wash, you need to prove that the rate at which produce travels through the flume is slow enough to ensure the contact time required at your ppm paa.

This.  I have plants using flumes and, while we aren't specifically writing down the time the product is in the wash, we've got heavy documentation that at x speed the product will be washed for the time we've specified.  That speed is what they're verifying at each check on their forms.