Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Appendix 2
The food safety controls operated within the factory areas shall be appropriate for the risks to the product. The expectations for factory hygiene, nish of the buildings, equipment and protective clothing/staff hygiene should reect the potential risks to the product. Identifying areas of different risk helps to ensure appropriate food safety controls are in place and identify the need to restrict the movement of personnel and materials between areas.
An enclosed product area is dened as an area of the factory where all of the products are fully enclosed and therefore not vulnerable to environmental contamination (e.g. by foreign bodies or micro-organisms). This includes areas where: the product is fully enclosed within packaging, e.g. raw material and nished product storage and dispatch areas the product is fully enclosed within equipment shielding the product from physical or microbiological contamination from the production environment during production. This may include enclosure within transfer pipework and fully enclosed equipment, and also where the equipment maintains its own environment to protect the product, e.g. aseptic lling equipment.
Areas meeting these criteria are typically found in liquid processing plants (e.g. dairies, wineries, and soft drinks or water bottling factories) and some highly mechanised industries such as our mills, sugar rening and oil processing facilities.
Wherever ingredients, intermediate or nished products are not protected from the factory environment there is a potential risk of product contamination by foreign bodies, allergenic material or micro-organisms in the environment. The signicance of the risk of microbiological contamination will depend upon the susceptibility of the product to support the growth or survival of pathogens and the expected storage conditions, shelf life and further treatment of the product at the factory or by the consumer. In determining the zones particular consideration shall be given to the risks presented by pathogens such as Listeria species). It should be recognised that some products considered as low risk on this basis will nevertheless require high standards of microbiological control, similar to a high-care area, because spoilage organisms present a signicant risk (e.g. yeasts in yogurt, mould on hard cheese).
94
BRC
Appendices
2.1
Low risk
In this area the greatest risk can be considered as physical contamination. The signicance to human health of microbiological contamination is reduced because the product is unsuitable for the growth of pathogens or is designed to undergo a later validated kill step that ensures the product is safe to eat. Consideration does, however, need to be given to the risk of pre-process spoilage and of contamination by pathogens which may survive but not grow on products (e.g. salmonella on chocolate, peanut butter or dried milk powder). The hygiene standards in such areas generally require greater emphasis on preventing foreign body and allergen contamination of products. These areas include: the production of products which will always require cooking before consumption, e.g. raw meats, prepared meals and pizzas with uncooked components and where instructions require products are to be fully cooked* before eating production facilities where products are either processed within the nal container or are unsuitable for the growth of pathogens and therefore stored and distributed as ambient products, e.g. canned products, pH-controlled products such as pickles, low aw foods such as dried foods and confectionery, and some baked products production facilities where ready-to-eat products are stored chilled to preserve the quality of the product but which have other controls to prevent the growth of pathogens, e.g. hard cheese production areas where processes are undertaken prior to the introduction of a validated kill step in the process, such as cooking, e.g. mixing and preparation areas prior to cooking.