The core principle of hygienic design is to prevent food safety issues that are caused by the contamination of food from factory machinery or factory buildings. This contamination can be caused by machinery or buildings that have been designed in such a way that make them difficult to clean and maintain.
However, well-considered hygienic design isn’t just about food safety and product quality. It also has the added advantages of improved productivity and efficiency, resulting from the reduced downtime, labour, energy requirements and costs associated with cleaning.
So, good hygienic design makes sense from a safety, quality, efficiency and financial perspective. If you’re looking to implement it successfully in your business, then here are ten top tips:
- Good communication is important from the outset
When it comes to hygienic equipment design it’s vitally important that there is good communication between the people making the machinery and those that are going to use it. Food safety professionals tend to talk in the language of HACCP and risk whilst engineers tend to talk about health and safety and ISO9000. As a result, it means there’s plenty of scope for miscommunication.
- A detailed User Requirement Specification (URS) is key
If you’re looking to purchase new equipment, then the first important step in hygienic design is to prepare a detailed User Requirement Specification (URS). This document contains lots of information but it’s key to ensuring that the equipment manufacturer knows exactly how you’re going to use your new machinery.
Here are some of the things you need to consider:
- The purpose of the machine – It sounds obvious, but what are you going to use it for?
- Products that you’ll manufacture- Are you going to produce multiple products or just one product? What are their salt, sugar, water activity and pH levels?
- The processes involved – What other production processes will be involved before and after the machine is used?
- The final consumer – Do they have any dietary requirements or allergies?
- Cleaning conditions for the machinery – Are you going to be carrying out wet or dry cleans?
- Operating environment – The temperature of the room and air flow, for example, can have a significant impact on the performance of a machine.
- Operating parameters – How many units are you realistically planning on producing per hour or day using the machinery?
- Machinery lifecycle – How long do you foresee having the piece of equipment for? This can have an impact on the materials used in its construction.
- Maintenance requirements – Do you require key spare parts to be purchased ready in case of breakdowns?
- Legal requirements / industry standards – Are there any legal requirements or industry standards associated with this type of machinery?
- Customer requirements – Do your customers have any requirements around the machinery specification e.g. the grade of stainless steel used?
- The past and future – If you currently use a similar piece of machinery, then what is good and bad about it? In the future, do you foresee using this machine for something else?
- Assemble a multi-disciplinary team
It’s important to bring together as many relevant stakeholders within the business to look at the piece of equipment you’re planning on purchasing and what they want out of it. This can include engineering, technical, production operatives that will use the machinery, and finance as well as external stakeholders such as architects when constructing new builds.
- Consider the hazards associated with the machine
This really ties in with HACCP. It’s important to make sure that you’ve considered the biological, physical, chemical and allergenic hazards related to the machinery as well as any potential negative influences on product quality.
- Undertake a Hygienic Design Risk Assessment (HDRA)
The next step you need to undertake is a hygienic design risk assessment (HDRA) that considers the likelihood of the hazards identified being present in the machinery. You also need to think about whether these hazards are likely to still be in the food at the point of consumption or whether further processing will reduce the risk. For example, raw meat is likely to be cooked before it is consumed and pathogenic bacteria removed as part of the process, controlling the presence of microbiological hazards which could cause foodborne illness.
Other general considerations include whether hazards could be present in the equipment following installation or whether they could be introduced to the equipment during use e.g. engineering oils. In addition, could the hazards be concentrated in the equipment through accumulation or growth?
- Applying the principles of hygienic design
Once you’ve considered what the potential hazards are and you’ve undertaken a risk assessment, it’s now time to apply the principles of hygienic design to prevent or reduce any hazards.
EHEDG’s Doc.8 Hygienic Design Principles looks at them in detail and is free to download, but key considerations include:
- Construction materials – ensure that the materials used to make the equipment aren’t going to cause possible hazards to the food products e.g. that they don’t interact with cleaning agents or the food to create chemical hazards.
- Cleanability – use materials that are easy to clean and disinfect.
- Surfaces and geometry – ensure that you have smooth surfaces, including smooth continuous welds. Reduce the number of ‘catchment’ areas for dirt and debris to collect in.
- Accessibility – all areas of the machine need to be accessible for cleaning and servicing.
- Segregation – it’s important to keep things like lubricants away from product contact areas. When it comes to the hygienic design of buildings, it’s critical to keep high and low risk production areas segregated.
- Drainablility – if you’re using cleaning in place (CIP) then it’s important to make sure that cleaning chemicals can be sufficiently removed from all surfaces/ environments to prevent product contamination.
- Compare your requirements with the equipment / material supplier specifications
After you’ve compiled all this information, the equipment supplier will be able to propose a piece of equipment and provide a specification for you to compare against your requirements.
In an ideal world, they will be able to mitigate against all the risks/ hazards that you’ve identified. If not, you’ll need to bring your team back together to discuss how you can modify your HACCP plan’s pre-requisite program to control any potential hazards.
- Installing the equipment on site
When you’ve purchased your piece of equipment, you’ll need to plan and confirm the commissioning procedures and controls needed to install it on site. Once again, this should include as many relevant people as possible, and you should ensure that the installation process itself doesn’t cause any contamination.
Various documents will need to be updated to take into account your new piece of equipment. For example, this might include environmental swabbing, maintenance and staff training programmes as well as your glass and hard plastics register. A trial period for testing the equipment should also be agreed with the manufacturer, equipment supplier, consumable supplier, commissioning team and other interested parties.
- Continuously review your new machinery
Once your equipment is up and running, it’s important to continuously review how it’s performing. Is it operating as you expected it to? Have there been any product complaints that mean you need to review the machine operation in more detail? Are you seeing high microbiological swab results from the machine that need investigating?
It’s also very important to undertake a review whenever you change how you’re using the machine e.g. when using different raw materials/ packaging, making new products, or introducing additional processes before or after the machine is used.
- Review your existing equipment
Whilst a lot of the discussion around hygienic design relates to bringing new or used equipment onto production sites, it’s also very important to consider the existing equipment you have on site and whether it’s still fit for purpose.
Follow these ten top tips and you’ll be well on the way to incorporating hygienic design into your daily business operations.
Here at ZERO2FIVE we can offer funded hygienic design support to eligible Welsh food and drink manufacturers through the Welsh Government’s HELIX Programme. To find out more about the support available, please contact us.
To find out more information about hygienic design, visit the European Hygienic Engineering & Design Group’s website.
Simon Burns
Process Operations Manager
ZERO2FIVE Food Industry Centre
