Food and beverage manufacturers the world over have a duty of responsibility, and a legal obligation, to ensure that products entering the market are safe for consumption. Underperforming cleaning routines are a known root cause of food safety incidents and when an estimated 75% of cleanings executed on a daily base in the food industry are not properly validated and poorly documented (EHEDG, 2016), many contaminated products could be entering the marketplace.
In addition to frequent verification such as visual checks or swab tests, cleaning in place (CIP) systems and protocols should be routinely validated to operate with confidence in cleaning processes and demonstrate legal compliance.
The objective of cleaning validation is to prove that the processing equipment is consistently cleaned of product, microbial residues, chemicals, soils and allergens, to an acceptable level, to prevent cross-contamination of hazards between products. A comprehensive validation project should follow the Plan, Do, Check, Act methodology.
Planning is the most important stage in any project. A robust plan will include a Project Charter which defines the goals and objectives of the project and details the activities and risks to achieve them.
Some of the contents which would be found in a validation project charter include:
The European Hygienic Engineering and Design Group (EHEDG) guide ?Cleaning validation in the Food Industry - General Principles? is an excellent resource to utilize when developing the CIP validation project charter. It describes the aspects to be considered at each of the following stages:
Data is collected according to agreed collection methods, guidelines (including health and safety) and timeframe, as described in the project charter.
Data is collated and compared with historical records and against performance and measurement criteria set in the project charter. Any shortcomings will need to be addressed and retested before the CIP system can be validated.
A documented report should be produced once the CIP system has been successfully validated. Content should include:
An estimated 75% of cleanings executed on a daily basis in the food industry are not properly validated
Diversey? CIPCheck? is the baseline for CIP validation available from our Knowledge-based Services portfolio.
Our trained CIP specialists will use a combination of data collection methods to perform a detailed analysis of your utilities, chemicals and operating data and produce a full report on the effectiveness of your washes and highlight any areas for improvements in food safety, environmental impact and OEE (overall equipment effectiveness).
Also available is Diversey? CIPTEC, our remote monitoring solution which measures the volume of soil and cleaning chemical in CIP rinse stages to accurately determine the effectivity of each stage. Utilizing this data along with the conductivity, flow and temperature during the wash, our statistical data analysis methods calculate the optimal regime to eliminate overwashing while maintaining a safety margin at 6 sigma level and validating the effectiveness of the cleaning process.