Food Safety Techniques During Processing and Packaging

 

Food safety techniques is to prevent contamination and to decrease the possibility of microbial contamination of food by appropriate handling, preparing and storage.  Growing knowledge of food safety and quality awareness among the buyers has caused the increase of food safety industry in the last few decades.To decrease food contamination in processing centers, processing equipments and tools that are main source of contamination has to be maintained and summarized correctly. 

For maintaining safety and quality of meals, hygienic techniques like sanitation or cleaning processes are important to carry out decontamination.Measures for cleaning or sanitation procedure includes:

Wet Cleaning: At the end of the production day, generally the decontamination of cleaning tools used in moist environment is performed.  The decontamination is carried out by use of hose throughout the immersion of warm water containing detergent. 

Dry Cleaning: In dry good environments, cleaning is done with the assistance of brushes which are thrown away after use.  In dry foods for ensuring optimum food safety techniques the cleansing tools are not wet washed as it can lead to the problem of microbial growth and cross contamination.  A range of methods used for cleaning and sanitation in packaging and processing to maintain food from pollution and improving food safety includes:

Mobile high pressure, Low-volume cleaning equipments: It functions on the principle of automation of cleaning through high pressure spray nozzle.  The machine is equipped with motor driven high pressure pump,storage container and high-pressure shipping line and nozzle.  Portable high-pressure, low-volume equipment is relatively inexpensive and highly effective in removing big soils. 

High- pressure steam: This cleansing technique may be used to eliminate debris accumulated in processing equipment that could contribute to cross-contamination.  Portable foam cleaning: Portable foam cleaning is among the hottest cleaning techniques due to the ease of use and its foaming application.  Foam is formed by mixing water and air with cleaning This cleanup technique is valuable for cleaning of interior and exterior of processing equipments, valves, valves , storage containers. 

Portable gel cleansing: In this cleaning technique the cleanup procedure is applied as a gel.  This method is often used and is highly effective in food packaging Centralized or mobile slurry cleaning: The foam produced has more clinging capability and formed slurry has significantly more fluid compared to foam.  The Slurry even has ability to penetrate un-even surface more Combination centralized high pressure and foam cleaning: The cleaning system is pricey and this system provides more flexibility because of the use of the foam on a big surface area.  For the application of sanitizer by hose or by spray header on processing gear, particularly moving belts or conveyors, sanitizing lines could be included in centralized high-pressure, low-volume cleaning and foam cleansing gear.