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Have a quick look at your environmental monitoring program. Have you ever thought of the possibility that your environmental monitoring program might have some shortcomings that may sooner or later lead to outbreaks and recalls?
A closer look at the number of yearly recalls and outbreaks confirms that much has not changed related to the traditional environmental monitoring program for most food processors. There is a famous saying, “You can not control what you do not know”. This brings us to the question of why food companies around the globe have not yet shifted to a risk-based enhanced approach to environmental monitoring.
Defining EMP in the Most Comprehensive Way
Put simply, EMP is a significant tool in recognizing sources of contamination and non-compliant areas in any food manufacturing unit in order to evaluate the efficiency of sanitation and monitoring procedures in place. It represents characterizing and ensuring the cleanliness of the environment to be equally important as maintaining hygiene practices in the processes and activities for ensuring food safety.
In general, any environmental monitoring program operates by assembling and carrying out activities associated with microorganisms, and allergen monitoring related to all components in the environment, including contact and not contact surfaces, air, and water testing.
Risks Linked to a Poor Environmental Monitoring System
Most often nowadays even after establishing the most effective sanitation protocols, food supply chains face many challenges in terms of their food safety expectations. Unidentified loopholes in the environmental monitoring plan can result in food safety incidents. An apt example would be the multistate recall incident tied to the deadly outbreak of listeriosis in 2015 associated with frozen dairy products such as ice cream, frozen yogurt, sherbet, and frozen snacks that resulted in 3 deaths and 10 hospitalizations across four states. This issue can be mainly accounted for reasons including inadequate monitoring of those sanitation protocols, testing for the wrong pathogens, less attention to clean areas that are not visible, being unaware of all the prevailing risks to be handled, and improper scheduling of sampling. In reality, if you are unable to find any pathogenic risk in the environment from the monitoring activities it implies that either you are not looking enough or you are looking at the wrong areas.
Despite the Preventive Controls for Human Food rule implemented by the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA Process, Sanitation, and Allergen Control) for producers of ready-to-eat foods to build a fulfilling EMP that can successfully monitor the plant environment through accurate risk assessment procedures, food industries have not been able to keep up with it which potentially results in contamination and occurrence of hazards. All of this can eventually lead to costly and catastrophic repercussions such as enormous wastage and endangering consumers. This is where the spectrum of environmental monitoring programs requires a clear understanding of the source, risk, sanitation, monitoring, and remedies i.e. remodeling.
How an Appropriate EMP Aids in Promoting Food Safety
The remodeling of environmental monitoring programs in food industries benefits the food sector to enhance food safety in various ways. A shift in the implementation of EMP in food processing industries can help them to identify pathogen-harboring regions and cross-contamination sites much more competently. As a result, such programs will be capable of tackling the various food safety risks with ease and detecting any positive environmental monitoring results as an early indicator, and correcting the issue before any regulatory authority finds out.
However, some uncertainties related to the number of samples to be collected and the locations to be concentrated for testing are weak points that food companies still face in proper EMP execution. By integrating a digitalized system to carry out the environmental monitoring process, they can make its implementation much more easier and precise.
Setting Up a Proper EMP
FDA has also issued guidelines for food industries to follow through for the Control of Listeria monocytogenes in Ready-To-Eat Foods which can also be considered as a functional tool for a proper environmental monitoring program. The steps involved in building an appropriate EMP can be summarized as follows:
- Pinpoint and document possible microorganism sources covering all physical areas and cross-contamination vectors such as employees, equipment, pests, etc. Attention should be given to niche areas that tend to be ignored or are not conventionally checked like concealed areas or indirect contact surfaces.
- Carry out microbiological sampling frequency for pathogens and indicator microbes for these specific regions depending on a risk-based approach. Sampling technique should not restrict to a predefined surface area but to include sampling as much area as possible to increase the chances of finding. Care should be taken to schedule the sampling process at different time periods such as during, before, or after production activities.
- Define compliance limit for the tested microorganism and corrective action procedures for out-of-compliance results. The limit can be defined by following regulatory, industry best practices, and historical data from the past.
- If non-compliant, execute effective corrective actions (cleaning and disinfection) accordingly for the elimination of the present contaminant. Resampling should be carried out again to reevaluate the same areas based on vector swabbing. This process is continued till the risk is under control.
- A thorough documentation procedure must be followed at every stage of EMP to demonstrate that due diligence was followed.
Aspects to Overcome Challenges in Achieving an Optimized EMP
Some guidelines that food manufacturers can note down to perfect their environmental monitoring program are:
- Customizability of an environmental monitoring program eases the process of developing a new system for environmental monitoring or evaluating the existing one for food processors
- Inclusion of personnel from all areas of the production unit ensures a cross-functional team as they can regulate the regions and frequency of sample collection
- Looking out and addressing the positive results ascertain that there is an opportunity for the manufacturers to upgrade their programs through corrective and preventative protocols
- Using appropriate tools for monitoring activities by keeping in mind that the collection tools should be able to correctly assess the pathogens from all tested areas and are successful to overcome the several protective characteristics of the microorganisms
- Reconfirming the program never does any harm and thus periodic re-evaluations are advisable due to the likelihood of constant changes in environmental factors, which can in turn impact their cleanliness and sanitation
- Awareness related to EMP among all those involved with its implementation goes a long way in achieving the optimal program
Being mindful of these guidelines, it is essential to examine whether the environmental monitoring program that you have implemented is working efficiently. Our product Smart EMP is equipped to help build, monitor, evaluate and validate your environmental monitoring process quite effortlessly.
Streamlining Sanitation And Hygiene Protocols Through Smart EMP
As the food industry strides towards preventative food safety culture, environmental monitoring programs become an integral and uncompromisable part of any food company. This means that only the most dynamic implementation of an environmental monitoring program can completely serve its purpose to be a baseline of defense for food safety. That is why adopting our product Smart EMP can be said to be an apt choice as it can help food processors create an EMP program from scratch digitally with no or little knowledge and ensure the monitoring frequencies and corrective actions are implemented as needed.
Smart EMP not only digitalizes but also automates the environmental monitoring program by confirming the operational efficiency of cleaning and sanitation programs as intended and thus reducing the risk of environmental borne contamination to the products and in turn, reducing the chance of product recalls.
Our software can be used to onboard any existing EMP or create a new EMP program digitally in less than a few weeks and it is important to remember that the cost-benefit from having a working EMP would always outweigh the cost of the software.
The different smart features provided by Smart EMP include Digital Plant Layout, Heat and Harborage Map, Setting up Zones, Test and Limits, Planned and Random Scheduling, Predefined Corrective Action plan, Real-Time Data Analytics, and Customized Notifications. With these features, our EMP Software can smartly transform environmental monitoring to achieve the much-needed remodeling in maintaining a safe and hygienic food production environment and reduce the recall risk to businesses.
