Successful Christeyns webinar on «cost savings in hygiene while ensuring food safety»
In the international webinar organised by CHRISTEYNS on 30 September, the keys to saving costs in hygiene while guaranteeing food safety were discovered through practical examples and demonstrations of real success stories. This technical seminar was aimed at professionals in the food industry: quality managers, hygiene managers etc. Over 200 participants attended the webinar.
What did we present?
The day began with a presentation by Karin Goodburn MBE, Chief Executive of the Chilled Food Association (UK), who analysed the most serious outbreaks of Listeria poisoning in recent years and the risk management carried out in each of them: South Africa due to consumption of ready-to-eat meat products and in Europe related to frozen corn.
Goodburn stressed the importance of the 4Cs to avoid compromising food safety: Clean, Cook, Avoid Cross-contamination and Cold, to which he added a fifth rule: use good quality raw materials/ingredients.
The next presentation focused on cost optimisation through the right choice of chemicals. Fernando Lorenzo, R&D manager at CHRISTEYNS Food, solved the equation (more expensive chemicals = cheaper hygiene processes). The choice of chemicals has a high impact on the other aspects involved in the cleaning process: savings in water costs, energy and time.
Lorenzo illustrated these arguments by comparing cheap products and smart chemicals. He demonstrated that with the latter, the desired results can be achieved at a minimum cost and also avoid unexpected problems such as corrosion, waste generation…
The optimisation of both PPO and PIC processes was the focus of the next two presentations.
Liselotte de Rider, Product Application & Market Support Manager at CHRISTEYNS, explained how to reduce costs in open surface cleaning (OPC) through process monitoring based on the parameters of Sinner’s circle: chemicals, water, energy and time, to which she added: time to verify hygiene efficiency.
Through real results, she showed how thanks to the In-site OPC, a specialised system for the automated monitoring and optimisation of hygiene on open surfaces, a significant reduction in water and chemical consumption, and especially in the time spent has been achieved by more than half, all with improved microbiological results.
Peter Littleton, Technical Director at CHRISTEYNS UK, also through a real case, presented the effectiveness of the supervision of the cleaning of CIP circuits through the In-Site system. With data from July 2022, he shared the results of the implementation of this system in a dairy industry where a water saving of more than 9,000 m3 per year was achieved, as well as a chemical consumption saving of more than 50,000 euros per year. This represents an additional 7.2 hours of production per week.
The automation of L&D processes is also a key tool for reducing costs and increasing hygiene efficiency. This was demonstrated by Carmen Donet, export manager of CHRISTEYNS Spain, who presented two pieces of equipment: one for automatic belt cleaning and the other for ultrasonic cleaning of hooks and utensils.
Both food conveyor belts and hooks are critical points of cross-contamination and their cleaning depends to a large extent on the skills of the operators. Carmen Donet demonstrated through different graphs how automation achieves constant results without the influence of external factors and constant microbiological results and a saving, compared to manual cleaning, of more than 30% in the consumption of water, detergents and disinfectants. In addition to a reduction in total counts of up to 87% and 95% in enterobacteria.
The early detection of microorganisms and biofilms was the subject of the presentation by Maria Sanz, head of R&D Microbiology at CHRISTEYNS Spain. Maria stressed the importance of prevention to avoid microbiological contamination through rapid detection tools.
After describing the functioning and advantages of the rapid tests for microbiological contamination detection (Biofinder) and biofilm detection (TBF 300), Maria compared the traditional tools: laminocultures, swabs, wipes and ATP to highlight the advantages of the rapid tests, especially in terms of time to results and cost per sample. Besides the fact that their results are immediate and they are cheaper than traditional methods, these hygiene control tools (Biofinder and TBF 300) allow to react quickly and thus avoid a more serious problem.
The last lecture was given by Liselotte De Rider who, in conclusion, gave tips and tricks to be applied in the food industry in order to reduce costs.