Baking & Snack - October 2018 - 111

SANITATION STRATEGIES
Joe Stout
joe.stout@cf-san.com

BUGGING OUT
To keep infestations away, bakers need to plan ahead.

©Anatolii - stock.adobe.com

At one point in my career, I worked at a facility that was
capacity constrained. No matter how many hours we produced in a year, we still couldn't meet orders or clean to the
level that we should have. As a result, insect evidence and
consumer complaints followed. The solution was to shift to
a 3-day shutdown for infrastructure and equipment deep
cleaning in high-risk areas at the beginning of "insect season," which for us was May through October. This extra
time reduced insects and consumer complaints.
Although I am no longer involved in that facility,
I still see and feel the challenge to keep a bakery at an
acceptable level of cleanliness in the time allotted given
production schedules.
For many bakeries and snack plants, this is a busy
time of the year as schools are in session and the holiday
season is just around the corner. During these times it
becomes difficult to stay current on routine equipment
cleaning and even more challenging to stay on top of
cleaning infrastructure such as overheads. It's not possible to completely clean these areas while running production, and this opens the window for stored grain pest
proliferation. When insects have an opportunity to live,
grow and prosper undisturbed, their trails and other live
sightings create an unsanitary condition.
Most bakeries use pest management techniques: exclusion or keeping pests out of the facility, minimizing
growth potential by eliminating harborage areas and
food sources (like flour dust), and, if necessary, killing
insects with pesticides. This is the least ideal strategy.
It is difficult to expect good sanitation control if these
types of chemicals are applied to a dirty surface like a
floor wall junction, so keeping a plant clean is very
important.
When pesticides like methyl bromide were commonly used in the industry, it was routine to fumigate bakeries several times a year on holidays. This would provide
a level of control to infestation, but the plant was not
always thoroughly cleaned, and shortly thereafter, in-

sects would reappear. The industry thought it could not
survive without routine use of methyl bromide, but for
the most part, it has been doing well with more cleaning, some heat treatments and other control techniques.
Insects are tenacious and always find a way to breech
the walls of a plant. When they do, they seek out ideal living conditions. Just like any living creature, insects want
ample food, warmth and protection from enemies. The
way to control them is to make conditions less desirable.
This means eliminating accumulation of food debris for
eating and nesting. Cleanliness is the insect's No. 1 enemy.
A busy production schedule that restricts the sanitation team's presence is good news for insect pests. This
is especially true in production and storage areas where
fugitive flour dust may stick to overheads and walls or in
corners and other harborage places. Restricting fugitive
flour dust is an important strategy to minimize hours of
removing dust, insect trails and, of course, insects.
Scheduling time for sanitation and preventive maintenance tasks during peak production periods is a winning strategy. Without proper planning, maintenance
and sanitation will show up to work on a piece of equipment or in an area only to find that the equipment or
facility is not available for scheduled tasks.
Planning and scheduling can be done through a
preventive maintenance management system. Map
out available time using a 52-week planner to identify
cleaning and maintenance windows for each major task.
Ideally, planning downtime for equipment and infrastructure cleaning should happen at the beginning of the
year during plant capacity review and the establishment
of the master production schedule. Management must
provide the time needed for cleaning and maintenance
and stick to the agreement on planned shutdowns.
Sanitation takes planning, hard work and a smart
strategy that uses a variety of techniques and controls.
Most importantly, it takes spirited leadership to inspire
success and make a difference.

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