Conversations about food safety and cleaning tend to focus on sanitation -- sanitary equipment, chemical sanitizers, and so on. Industrial vacuum cleaners are more often discussed in the context of plant and worker safety, for example, combustible dust fire prevention. But an industrial vacuum cleaner can also play a critical role in your food safety plan. Here are five ways an industrial vacuum improves food safety.
1. Preventing bacterial contamination
An estimated 48 million Americans get sick from foodborne pathogens every year. Three thousand of them die. For the food industry, the costs associated with contamination are not small. Half of all recalls cost the companies more than $10 million (some cost more than $100 million), and that doesn’t count the damage to their reputation. Brooms, mops, and compressed air are commonly used to clean food processing facilities. But these systems have some major drawbacks:ind- Sweeping and compressed air don’t eliminate dust. They just move it around.
- Mopping introduces water. This gives bacteria a place to thrive.
2. Avoiding cross-contamination of foods with allergens
Food allergy reactions cause more than 200,000 people each year to require emergency medical care. To maintain an allergen-free environment, you must remove 100% of allergens from your plant and equipment. Industrial vacuum cleaners fitted with appropriate filters, such as HEPA and ULPA (ultra-low particulate air) filters, help you avoid cross-contamination with allergens in two ways:- First, they remove the allergens from the production environment.
- Then, they decontaminate the exhaust stream to prevent the allergens from recirculating back into the environment.
