Cleaning And Sanitizing – All You Need To Know

Author: Mr M Simone

One of the essential ways of producing safe and high quality dairy products is proper cleaning and sanitizing. A well trained and experienced staff from commercial cleaning companies provides the foundation for safe food processing. The key concepts of sanitation controls know what to clean, what soils are present, understanding how to handle cleaning chemicals safely and best practices for cleaning steps and washing factors.

Sanitization

Appropriate and approved sanitization procedures are processes, and, thus, the duration or time as well as the chemical conditions must be described. It is important to know the difference between sanitize, disinfect, and sterilize.

  • Sanitize refers to the reduction of microorganisms to levels considered safe from a public health viewpoint.
  • Disinfect refers to inanimate objects and the destruction of all vegetative cells (not spores).
  • Sterilize refers to the statistical destruction and removal of all living organisms.

General types of sanitization include the following:

  • Chemical Sanitization involves the use of an approved chemical sanitizer at a specified concentration and contact time.
  • Thermal Sanitization involves the use of hot water or steam for a specified temperature and contact time.

Cleaning

Cleaning is the complete removal of food soil using appropriate cleaning equipment and detergent chemicals under recommended conditions. It is important that personnel involved have a working understanding of the nature of the different types of food soil and the chemistry of its removal.

Cleaning Methods

Equipment can be categorized with regard to cleaning method as follows:

  • Manual Cleaning. Requires total disassembly for cleaning and inspection.
  • Clean-out-of-Place (COP). Can be partially disassembled and cleaned in specialized COP pressure tanks.
  • Mechanical Cleaning. Often referred to as clean-in-place (CIP). Requires no disassembly or partial disassembly.

Cleaning And Sanitizing - Importance

Food poisoning can cause severe illness or even death. Frequent, rigorous cleaning and sanitizing will help to prevent this from happening in your food business. There are three main reasons why cleaning and sanitizing is important:

  • Cleaning and sanitizing helps to protect customers and employees from health risks like food poisoning and allergic reactions.
  • Cleaning and sanitizing helps your business stay compliant with food safety laws and regulations.
  • Cleaning and sanitizing helps to prevent pest infestations.

What To Clean and Sanitize

As a general rule, everything that has had direct contact with food needs to be cleaned and sanitized using latest cleaning and sanitizing equipment. The other items that don’t have direct contact with food must be cleaned, but not necessarily sanitized.

The author of this article has been working in a company that offers industrial cleaning using advanced cleaning equipment. In this article, he has mentioned a few things you need to know about cleaning and sanitizing. Visit https://www.ecowize.com.au/