Plant sanitation: Piping and pumps

Piping, fittings and connections should be of ample diameter to permit easy cleaning; the design should provide for total drainage.

Piping and pumps should have no threaded joint where foods can accumulate. Sanitary design for such equipment calls for flush joints held together by clams, allowing thorough cleaning and sanitizing.

For product likely to solidify if pumping stops, such as liquid chocolate, the throughput pipe can be equipped with a hot water jacket. Hot water jackets also prevent an accumulation of fat inside the pipe when pumping certain types of sausage meat emulsion.

Pipes that carry food materials should have no dead ends that cannot be cleaned and where food material can accumulated and decompose.

With such construction, surges in the line cause decomposed material to enter the mainstream of the food material passing through the pipes.

Any permanently installed piping system must be provided with a return cleaning line to allow complete recirculation of detergent and sanitizer solutions during cleanup.

Pipe should not be joined to tanks and hoppers, so that the pipe end extended into the tank itself. In some cases when the liquid falls below the level of the pipe, some food remains in the pipe end where it may decompose and eventually contaminate new material entering the tank.

Pipes or chutes using gravity flow should be readily demountable for cleaning and inspection. When possible, easily removed covers should be used.

Pumps, valves and pipe fittings, including those used to insert thermometers and pressure gauge bulbs, should be the sanitary take-apart type and are readily accessible or removable. Pumps must have no internal bypasses in the head that are not self-draining. The pump head itself should be self-draining.

Tanks, flumes, thermometer wells, pots and pans should have only curve corners and junctions of side and bottom in order to facilitate cleaning.
Plant sanitation: Piping and pumps

Food plant exterior sanitation

On a more local basis, the location of a plant should avoid areas that are near existing harborages. Birds and rodents can be especially troublesome in this respect.

The surroundings for food plants should be neat trim, and well landscaped. Lawn should be cut regularly to avoid insects and other pests that lurk in tall grass. There are several reasons for this. Nice surroundings have a good psychological effect on those who work within.

If the environs are well kept, the personnel working there are much more apt to try to keep things neat and clean on the inside.

Control excessive growth of weeds and decorative plants to restrict insect or vermin harborage. If the surroundings are dirty or cluttered, those working in the plant are apt to become careless in matters concerned with general sanitation.

Trees and shrubbery that provide food or harborage for birds should not be planted on the grounds of food plants.

All parking spaces, roadways, and walks should be paved so that dust contamination of the air will be minimized, and contamination such as animal droppings will be washed away with each rain rather than be soaked into the ground to be airborne during dry spells.

The building exterior must be kept in good repair to help control environmental conditions within the plant and restrict pest entry.

The roof must have good drainage and be kept in good repair to prevent leakage of water into the building. Fines from roof vent blowout areas are also critical. Rodents will scale exterior wall when following the odors of fermenting fines lying about in roofs.

The areas surroundings a food plant including platforms, should not be used for storing crates, boxes, machinery, old equipments, conduit lines, food transfer shaft, discarded screw conveyors, and similar items since these materials may become a harborage for rodents that may eventually find their way into the plant.

Allowing weeds and landscape areas to grow unmanaged can result in substantial rodent populations flourishing at the threshold of the premises.

There should be no area around the plant where the landscaping allows potholes or depression of any kind in which water may accumulate and become a breeding place for insects that then may become established within the plant.

Good drainage must be provided around the plant to eliminate standing water that too could serve as a breeding place for insects or could allow prolific microbial growth.

Food materials, ensilage piles, or other organic wastes should not be present in any exposed area near the plant, since they attract and become breeding slaves for insect, especially flies, which are difficult to control in food plants, even in the best conditions.

Unitized dumpster-type collectors are useful: however these devices should be kept tightly closed when not in use.

There should be no neighboring plants such as chemical, sewage, poultry, or tanneries that may transfer bacteria or chemicals to the food plant.
Food plant exterior sanitation