Experts discuss how to renovate existing plants-and design new plants-to ensure maximum sanitary conditions
by Bryan Salvage, editor
Sanitary design is common sense. "It's creating a mind-set up front. You're trying to prevent product adulteration...period."
So says one of several sanitation experts contacted by Meat Marketing & Technology on the topic of renovating existing plants or building new ones with sanitation in mind.
New meat plants are being designed so they're easier, faster and more efficient to clean. This enhances product safety and allows meat companies more production time.
Years ago, the industry wasn't as aware of the potential danger from organisms such as E. coli 0157:H7, salmonella and listeria. Older meatpacking and processing plants featured smaller processing rooms with low ceilings. Production lines serpentined throughout the plant. Although considered state-of-the-art at the time, this type of design made plants difficult to clean and sanitize.
Renovating an existing plant to ensure better sanitation is a tough job.
All aspects of the operation-from the floors to the walls to the ceiling-must be considered.
Floors, for example, take the most abuse of any surface area in a facility.
"You have forklift traffic, hot and cold water, blood, acid, fat and detergent," says a St. Louis-based senior food and sanitation technologist for one of the leading providers of total project management for business and industry. "There are surfaces now that withstand all of that, but you have to be selective on the surfacing material."
Monolithics (epoxy or urethane floor coverings), for example, can be spread over a well-prepared concrete surface. However, there are some temperature difficulties with monolithics, he adds.
They won't withstand a lot of high temperature. Don't put monolithics under a fryer, for instance. But a lot of meat companies are using monolithics, which can be applied quickly and even coved.
"A lot of meat plants still have the old tried-and-true acid brick, which is expensive but my favorite," the technologist adds.
In renovating an existing plant, many companies are going with reinforced fiberglass paneling (RFP) for walls. It is non-absorbent, non-staining, and it goes up easily, the technologist claims. However, one of the problems with RFP is it is highly susceptible to damage [cracking or breaking when bumped hard]; you must be very careful, he adds.
Some plants are renovating ceilings to rid them of overhead pipe lines and wiring-which could harbor dust and other contamination that could drop to the floor. These mechanical lofts have all utilities in place above the ceiling, the technologist points out. All lines drop vertically through holes in the ceiling to eliminate horizontal runs over the equipment.
In improving sanitary conditions inside of a meatpacking plant, equipment purchases, in particular, need special attention.
"When you buy a piece of equipment, there are two things you should put on the purchase order: It must be of sanitary design-and you must be able to disassemble, clean and reassemble the piece of equipment and have it up and running within a reasonable amount of time," the technologist says. "If you run a plant 20 hours a day, you should be able to do all of this within four hours."
Packers and processors should get away from using alligator clips on conveyor belts and go to a welded or glued lap, he adds. The sides of conveyors must be open. Some meat plants have side rails holding the belt down, and this makes it hard to get underneath to clean them.
Some companies are increasing the size of their production areas so the equipment isn't jammed together-making both the processing area and equipment easier to clean.
One 50-year veteran architectural engineering designer, however, who is senior principal for a Chicago-based firm specializing in the meatpacking and food industry, says renovating older plants-many of which have low head room and equipment hanging from the ceiling-can be a very expensive proposition.
"It may cost as much to remodel that area as it would to build a new one," he says.
He also brings up the challenge of correcting old plant design from the aspect of flow-through. Years ago, U-flow plants were popular-where raw product entered at the bottom of the U, traveled around the processing area, and exited at the other end of the U. Receiving and shipping were right next to each other. They sometimes shared a common dock.
"Most of the new plants we're designing today are one-story plants where product enters at one end of the plant, travels in a straight direction from process to process, and exits the other end [which reduces the prospects of cross-contamination]," he adds.
Colorado State University's Richard Worfel, Gary Smith and John Sofos recently conducted a project to collect baseline data regarding viable microorganisms in aerosols in beef plants with straight slaughter lines where a dividing wall separates the hide-on and hide-off areas vs. serpentining slaughter lines with no dividing walls.
Viable airborne microorganisms were enumerated in three beef slaughter plants with different slaughter line layouts. The plant with a modified straight slaughter line and dividing wall was the only plant showing a decrease (P<0.05) in microbial count between the hide-on and hide-off areas.
Air control
Packers and processors should have a good HVAC [heating, ventilation and air conditioning] system-one that will keep their surfaces free of condensate, the technologist says. Moving air will keep surfaces free of condensate, which carries a lot of little bugs [microorganisms]-and packers and processors don't want that dripping onto their product.
"Packers that slaughter need filtered air with positive air pressure in the process areas so when you open the door into your kill or hot carcass area, the air is traveling from the process area into the kill area," he adds.
Cargill's new plant
Cargill's new processed meats plant in Nebraska City, Neb., began operating Jan. 3. It processes pre-cooked items including prime rib, beef and pork ribs, and pastrami and other deli products. Company executives did their homework when designing the 120,000-square-foot facility, says plant manager Hugo Irizarry.
"Before we started construction, we had all of our contractors attend a one-day seminar that St. Louis-based Sverdrup Corp. conducted on sanitary plant and equipment design," Irizarry says. "This course covered how to design equipment, rooms, walls and fixtures, among other things, to diminish the possibility of bacteria growth and cross-contamination."
In the past, plant design focused mainly on enhancing production efficiencies, he adds. Ergonomics and sanitation aspects weren't taken as much into consideration.
"This course changed our way of looking at the construction," Irizarry points out. "We worked on the plant design for more than 2.5 years. We [employees and management] did a lot of brainstorming to create a plant that fully separates cooked and raw products [to reduce the possibilities of cross-contamination].
"These areas are separated by walls," he adds. "Employees in each area enter different locker rooms, eat in different cafeterias and utilize different washrooms. When going into their locker rooms, they change their footwear first. Before entering the processing rooms, employees change their clothes. We also have hand washes."
The new plant has very few overhead structures. Pipes, ammonia lines, electrical conduits and other items are kept outside of the processing room. Conduit inside of the processing area is PVC-coated, which promotes easy cleaning and prevents rust.
Cargill's new plant is designed so the processes run straight through.
"You enter one door and go straight through the process without any turns and you exit at the other end. We even checked which direction most of the wind velocity came from to make sure we were minimizing the possibility of contaminating the air intakes of the plant," Irizarry says.
"We also have a lot of CIP [clean-in-place] systems," he adds. "We're able to effectively clean the units-especially the ovens and brine chillers. We have several independent systems. While one unit is operating, the other can be in a clean-up mode. We operate three shifts: two production and one sanitation.
"Our sanitation shift runs from about midnight until 6:30 a.m., and it's done by our own personnel; not a contract clean-up crew," Irizarry adds.
Effective and consistent temperature refrigeration is one of the most important aspects of any meat plant.
"We went with King air refrigeration units," Irizarry says. "They guarantee no condensation in the room, which is one of the big problems some meat plants have. The units also have the ability to filter the air, and we have positive air pressure within the ready-to-eat areas [which eliminates the possibility of blowing in air contamination from the raw product handling area into the processing area.]."
The plant's complete refrigeration system is managed by computer, but can also be managed manually.
"We're able to determine what the refrigeration temperatures are in any area of the plant and track them down through a recording system," Irizarry says. "We'll record them up to 48 hours. We can download that information onto disks and save it for our quality control program."
This feature allows managers to easily see temperature fluctuations in any of the rooms.
"The other thing we did is place ammonia detectors on the evaporators," Irizarry adds. "If we have even a minor ammonia leak, the system picks it up and notifies the operators before it becomes a major issue."
Floors in the new plant have an epoxy coating.
"It's non-slip. It's also non-porous, which keeps the bacteria from accumulating. This also makes the washdown a lot easier," Irizarry claims.
The future
When designing new plants, the Chicago-based senior principal says: "Pick people to do the design work who know about your industry and the problems you face."
Many packers want to increase their line speeds, which will present more of a challenge to run a sanitary operation. "If you're going to design for faster production, then you design sanitation into the equipment so it's easily cleanable," the technologist advises. "We have to get this through to the equipment design engineers and designers.
"Look at a piece of equipment and ask yourself, 'Can I thoroughly clean this in an hour so when they swab from the QA [quality assurance] lab they won't find anything?' " he adds.
Glenn Schmidt, professor at the Center for Red Meat Safety at Colorado State University, says: "Plant design, along with SOPs [Standard Operating Procedures] and GMPs [Good Manufacturing Procedures], are the foundations one needs before you go into a HACCP program."
Engineers, architects and equipment suppliers must integrate any changes to make a plant safer and more sanitary with a packer's HACCP plan, he adds.
Sanitation experts contacted by MM&T say expect to see more plants operating with foot washes, hand washes and hand sanitation from room to room. Does this mean the U.S. meat industry is evolving toward a clean room environment?
"When you say clean room, you're talking about a class of room," the senior technologist says. "Class 100,000 means you have no more than 100,000 particles a half-micron or larger per cubic foot of air. You're getting down into operating room cleanliness at this point.
"What we really need to talk about is filtered air with positive air pressure in the processing areas so the air travels from the process area to the kill area," he adds. "If you use 95 percent efficiency filters and you have a positive pressure in processing, you'll do just as well [compared to a clean room environment]."
Michael J. Rose, AMI director of scientific affairs and former FSIS deputy director for facilities equipment and sanitation, predicts industry can expect more in-plant testing systems.
"As rapid tests develop, you'll see a lot more on-site testing of product and equipment to demonstrate the effectiveness of cleaning and sanitation," Rose says. "It's difficult to do some of these rapid tests now because of the [long] lag times. But rapid tests will become a marketing tool for companies using them."