Establish Control Measures, Preventive Controls, and Practices: Color-coding strategy may be employed as part of the current Good Manufacturing Practices, or as a risk-based Preventive Control, or as an industry best practice. ![]() If raw product is touching finished product because there isn’t enough workspace, color-coding may not help. Evaluate the Applicability of Color-Coding: Will color-coding prevent issues? If you need to identify a way of keeping scoops separated, it would be an appropriate use of color-coding as a preventive control.Conduct a Comprehensive Hazard Analysis: Do you have areas where there’s a chance of allergen cross-contact or cross-contamination? These could be the right place to establish color-coding zones or use color-coded implements.The steps to establishing any preventive controls are as follows: The facility may decide to reference color-coding within their Current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMPs), Preventive Controls, or Best Practices framework as long as there’s consistency and a clear process of justifying, verifying, and reviewing the program. As a Standalone Color-Coding Plan: This could reference other procedures and can also follow the same format as the food safety plan.As a Preventive Control within a Food Safety Plan: For this, the plan must be validated or justified, monitored, verified, and reviewed as a food safety control.As Part of the Standard Operating Procedures: A color-coding plan can specify the colors used for scoops for handling different products within an Allergen SOP, or cleaning brushes to be used for different surfaces within a Sanitation Standard Operating Procedure (SSOP).There are three main ways a color-coding plan can fit into a food safety management system: It can also be used to separate allergen zones. Something as simple as red and blue storage tubs could easily separate low-risk raw meat from high-risk processed product to prevent cross-contamination. The other function of color-coding is that colors can separate the zones and products based on risk. If blue-bristled pipe brushes are used for cleaning food conveyance pipes, and black-bristled tube brushes are used for clearing drains, there is a clear identifier between food-contact and non-food contact tools to prevent accidental misuse. More importantly, colors act as visual cues or identify the personnel, equipment or tools within an area. ![]() The same concept could apply to material handling across process flows and act as a signal for whether the product should move to the next process level or not. Colors can signal the process status – visualize the traffic lights and what each color communicates to a driver. For a number of facilities, color-coding has become one of the preventive controls to protect food against direct contamination, cross-contact, and cross-contamination incidences.īenefits of Color-Coding as a Preventive ControlĬolor-coding is prized as a preventive control for its ability to easily and quickly communicate information essential for food safety. FSMA now requires food facilities to conduct a comprehensive hazard analysis and then establish risk-based preventive controls. So, considering the growing public health and concerns the economic burden of foodborne illnesses, it made perfect sense when the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act shifted the FDA’s focus from simply responding to food safety problems to trying to prevent them. As if the human cost isn’t sobering enough, the Grocery Manufacturers Association also estimates the average cost of a recall to a food company is a whopping $10 million in direct costs in addition to brand damage and lost sales. According to the CDC, 1 in 6 Americans become sick by eating contaminated food every year, resulting in an estimated 3,000 deaths.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |