As a requirement of the Health and Social Care Act Code of Practice on the prevention and control of infections and related guidance DH Criterion 2 a levy is placed on all health and social care providers to provide adequate facilities, including the environment and equipment; which are clean and fit for purpose. Cleanliness of the environment and equipment is an essential part of infection prevention and control and plays a vital role in the prevention of spread of infection.
Each facility should have a strategy in place to assist and maintain very high levels of cleaning standards. Monitoring these accepted standards of cleanliness can be achieved through regular and consistent auditing. Technical auditing such as: ATP Adenosine Triphosphate hygiene monitoring systems can measure the levels of bioburden in the environment are an ideal way to evidence the levels of cleanliness currently being achieved.
It also is important to note larger RLU values do not indicate that a system is more sensitive. ATP testing is a well-established method for measuring hygiene, however it cannot be used as a replacement for traditional microbiology tests.
Conventional microbial tests are often concerned with counting the number of colony forming units CFU per area of the surface being tested.
ATP test methods detect ATP from all living cells and product residues, so it is not inherently indicative of the measure of bacteria on a surface. RLUs measure the overall cleanliness of a surface rather than the number of bacteria. Because colony counts and RLU values are determined using different test methods and measure different elements of hygiene monitoring, RLU values do not necessarily correlate to colony forming units when testing an environmental surface.
ATP hygiene monitoring provides a measurement of the direct risks resulting from high levels of microorganisms plus the indirect risks resulting from organic residues that can provide a source of nutrients to microorganisms. An effective hygiene monitoring programme will make use of both ATP and microbial testing technologies. The most important first step in choosing to use an ATP testing device is understanding how the technology will integrate into a larger environmental monitoring programme.
Food manufacturers should start by mapping their entire facility into multiple areas, or hygienic zones, based on the microbial risk to the product. Once the full environment has been mapped and considered, managers should work with their team to determine the most relevant test points and a testing cadence that makes sense for their specific processes.
The two most important things to consider when evaluating how important a given test point are: how close the surface is to the actual food product, and how difficult the surface is to clean. For example, conveyor belts or meat slicers could be considered Zone 1 sites because they hold a much higher risk and need to be tested much more frequently than a forklift in a facility, for example; but all surfaces are important to monitor regularly.
Lower risk areas can be monitored much less frequently, but they should still be tested often enough to ensure that sanitation efforts are sufficient to secure the safety of the facility. ATP tests verify a surface is clean and microbial tests verify the sanitizer is working. These two methods are providing information about two different things. For cleaning validation, food processors should use microbial tests as part of their validation study.
If you have a microbial test that is passing, you can correlate that to the ATP result to decide if this is a clean surface. Microbial tests additionally, should be used with a defined frequency to verify that the sanitation process is being effective. For ATP testing, there is not one pass number that can apply to every facility and every surface. These can include the material of the surface, age of the surface, what has contacted that surface, how often it is cleaned, and the cleaning procedure and its elements time, temperature, chemicals, etc.
For example, porous surfaces are more difficult to clean so you may set a higher acceptable ATP level for that surface than a smooth surface. Food manufacturers should develop their own specifications based on what they normally see for each test point site after proper cleaning.
A common starting baseline for many facilities is to set as pass and as fail. Then, intense testing with ATP swabs should be done after a deep cleaning, this will generate data for a defined period of time for example two to three weeks or 10 to 30 cleaning cycles and in several pre-selected testing points in order to have an appropriate coverage of the production line or equipment. Then, analyze the results to set a reasonable limit for that surface, and adjust your pass and fail values.
There are additional tools you can use to determine acceptable baseline levels. Remember that the baseline is just a suggested starting point. Adjust your baselines to reflect your internal data and acceptable limits. To learn more about this topic and others that may improve your food safety testing process, access additional resources here.
0コメント