How to set up your Hygiene when running or opening an abattoir…

I was recently engaged to set up the cleaning & hygiene practices in a newly established abattoir. This was a newly built project, and the client had engaged a health and safety team, and a consultancy to design the building, ensuring sinks etc were all in place.

At the final stages when the build was almost complete, I was engaged to ensure that all cleaning and hygiene practices met the standards that were required by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) who are responsible for inspection of the hygiene standards but also the inspection of the environmental impact of an abattoir.

I arrived on site, to do a site audit, and take the brief in terms of what meats they would be processing, to find that we were starting from the ground up, there were no chemicals onsite and we had a single qualified butcher onsite as the client liaison for Astral Hygiene.

I began by doing a walk through, and making recommendations for infrastructure in terms of soap dispensers and hand towel dispensers. I made a recommendation for an anti-microbial soap as this was a low risk processing site.

You may be wondering why a place that processes meat is deemed ‘low’ risk? Meat will be cooked once processed, so it’s not going to be directly eaten straight out to the factory. A high risk processing plant would be a sandwich processing plant or a sushi processing plant. In these types of places, the food product is packaged and sent directly to the shelves.

Once we had agreed on the hand towel dispensers, we discussed a colour coded system for all mops, brushes, shovels etc. This was necessary, as this site was to be processing both venison, and game birds, so we need to avoid all cross contamination. This was red for vension, blue for game, green for general areas, and yellow for toilets - it doesn’t matter which colour you choose, as long as the posters on the wall tell you which colour is for what. I provided the posters.

We added a foot wash to both entry and exit doors, so that all boots were sanitised upon entry and exit. This was recommended by me as a best practice measure, and the client decided that they would like to embed this process into their overall solution.
When I’m setting up a site like this, I prefer to go ‘belt and braces’. I find that with a very thorough approach, when the site is set up correctly, they sail through the inspection.

We also put blue centrefeed roll dispensers on the walls so that we had a disposable wiping solution.

In terms of chemicals, there are many things to consider here, but with all the nuances on this site, we decided to go for a super concentrated system, which came with wall mounted dispensers and we decided to go for a BS EN 1276 and BS EN 14476 Cleaner Sanitiser. We also installed a superconcentrated Cleaner Degreaser as this is important to make sure that all grease was removed from surfaces, and this can be diluted into a mop bucket to mop the floors.

I also recommended a 10% detergent, and a bactericidal detergent to make sure that dishes were cleaned, and then sanitised.
All chemicals were then delivered to site, and dispensers were installed.

Once we’d agreed on the chemical and paper components, it was then I used these to devise a training programme and a COSHH (Care of Substances Hazardous to Health) training. In terms of the training programme I created task cards for each and every cleaning activity, from the two stage process to cleaning and sanitising a food preparation surface, to the two stage process for cleaning a dish/knives by hand. This provides a step-by-step guide to each and every activity you can use for each and every chemical – this is a very comprehensive guide.

I created a booklet for the COSHH training, which provides information on the hazard warning signs associated with each and every chemical, the Personal Protection Equipment for each and every chemical and some general advice on moving and handling the chemicals.

This information was then all pulled together into a very thick and comprehensive binder for inspection by the food standards agency.
The training was rolled out to the key team members who were available (recruitment had not yet begun), and the team then booked the food standards agency to come along and inspect the premises now that everything was in place.

I was invited to the inspection, so that I could advocate for the client, along with the Health and Safety Consultancy, the business owner and the head butcher.

As I said earlier, I usually go into these situations ‘belt and braces’ and this approach was approved of by the Food Standards Agency. If everything is as it should be, and all documentation is present, most of the questions by the FSA answer themselves.

The task cards I produced, provided answers to the question of what each chemical was used for; the colour coding system showed we had considered cross contamination; the boot wash created the right impression that hygiene is important. There were zero issues with the infrastructure I had set up, and I was complimented on how quickly I had rolled out the solution in under a week.

When you are setting up a food producing business, I would encourage you to seek expert advice. The advice I provided, the documents and the training were all offered and delivered free of charge. This is really how we add value to our customers. We share information here on our blog, but having an expert eye look over your property and see things which the untrained eye won’t see will help impress the FSA, but also help you to open quickly, and without delay.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be talking about other sites I’ve worked on, and these have their own specific challenges, all unique to their own environment. I find this type of work fascinating!

Thanks for reading and you know where I am if you need me!!

Anna