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Food Sanitation

Sanitation: An Applied Science

Sanitation is an applied science that incorporates the principles of design, development, implementation, maintenance, restoration, and/or improvement of hygienic practices and conditions. Sanitation applications refer to hygienic practices designed to maintain a clean and wholesome environment for food production, processing, preparation, and storage. However, sanitation is more than just cleanliness. Done properly it can improve the aesthetic qualities and hygienic conditions of commercial operations, public facilities, and homes. Also, applied sanitary science can improve waste disposal, which results in less pollution and an improved ecological balance. Therefore, when effectively applied, food sanitation and general sanitary practices have a beneficial effect on our environment.

Sanitation is considered to be an applied science because of its importance to the protection of human health and its relationship with environmental factors that relate to health. Therefore, this applied science relates to control of the biological, chemical, and physical hazards in a food environment. Sanitarians must be familiar with all these hazards and thoroughly understand the basic food microbiology and the organisms that are most likely to affect human health. By identifying, evaluating, and controlling hazards and through the effective application of sanitary practices, a safe and wholesome food supply can be assured.

What Is Sanitation?

The word sanitation is derived from the Latin word sanitas, meaning “health.” Applied to the food industry, sanitation is “the creation and maintenance of hygienic and healthful conditions.” It is the application of a science to provide wholesome food processed, prepared, merchandised, and sold in a clean environment by healthy workers; to prevent contamination with microorganisms that cause foodborne illness; and to minimize the proliferation of food spoilage microorganisms. Effective sanitation refers to all the procedures that help accomplish these goals.

Why Sanitation?

More processing is now conducted at plants near the area of production, a trend that should continue in the years ahead. Many of these food plants are hygienically designed; nevertheless, foods can be contaminated with spoilage microorganisms or those that cause foodborne illness if proper sanitary practices are not followed. However, hygienic and safe foods can be produced with sanitary practices, even in older plants. Sanitary practices can be as important to the wholesomeness and safety of food as are the characteristics of the physical plant.

With increased productivity, convenience foods and other long shelf-life processed foods are affected by problems created through advanced technology. The major problems have been with food contamination and waste disposal.

Most owners or managers of food facilities want a clean and sanitary operation. However, unsanitary operations frequently result from a lack of understanding of the principles of sanitation and the benefits that effective sanitation will provide.

Sanitation: A Foundation for Food Safety Assurance

Proper sanitation practices provide the foundation that food safety assurance systems are built upon. Poor hygienic and sanitary practices can contribute to outbreaks of foodborne illnesses and cause injury. In the last several years, there have been some major food safety incidents that have made headlines and focused attention on poor sanitary practices in all sectors of the food system.

Major food safety incidents have common characteristics and include biological, chemical, or physical hazards. They occur throughout the food system and have occurred globally and often result from one or a combination of factors including:

• contaminated raw materials
• errors in transportation, processing, preparation, handling, or storage
• packaging problems
• food tampering/malicious contamination
• mishandling
• changes in formulation or processing
• inadequate maintenance of equipment or facilities
• addition of incorrect ingredient(s)

Sanitation Laws and Regulations and Guidelines:

Sanitation requirements developed by legislative bodies and regulatory agencies in response to public demands are detailed in laws and regulations. They are not static but change in response to sanitation, public health, and new scientific and technical information regarding biological, chemical, and physical hazards and other important issues brought to public attention.

There are two types of regulations: substantive and advisory. Substantive regulations are more important because they have the power of law. Advisory regulations are intended to serve as guidelines. Sanitation regulations are substantive because food must be made safe for the public. In regulations, the use of the word shall means a requirement, whereas should implies a recommendation. Several regulations important to sanitation by various governmental agencies will now be addressed.

Establishment of Sanitary Practices:

Sanitation, good manufacturing practices, and other environmental and operating conditions necessary for the production of safe, wholesome food are known as prerequisite programs. These prerequisite programs provide the foundation for HACCP and are a vital component in a company food safety assurance system. So, the design and development of this entire system in a food facility begins with the establishment of basic sanitary practices.

The employer is responsible for establishing and maintaining sanitary practices to protect public health and maintain a positive image. The problem of establishing, implementing, and maintaining sanitary practices within the food industry is certainly a challenge. The sanitarian or person in charge of this important area must assure that the sanitary practices keep low-risk potential hazards from becoming serious hazards that could cause illness or injury. The sanitarian is both the guardian of public health and the counsellor to company management on quality and safety issues that are influenced by sanitary practices.

Ideally, an organization should have a fulltime sanitarian with assistants, but this is not always practical. Instead, a trained individual who was originally employed as a quality control technician, a production foreman, a superintendent, or some other individual experienced in production can be charged with the responsibility of the sanitation operation. This situation is common and usually effective. However, unless the sanitarian has an assistant to take care of some of the routine tasks and is given sufficient time for proper attention to sanitary details, the program may not succeed.

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