Hygiene is the foundation of food safety

Food safety begins on the drawing board, and the foundation is hygiene. This means assuring that everything that will ever come in contact with food – from components right down to connections, welds etc. – is of approved material. It also means assuring that service media (e.g. water, steam and air) supplies are designed with proper hygienic zoning barriers, and that the automation level enables tracking throughout the production process.

Tetra Pak employs hygienic risk assessment of machines and process lines during the development and engineering phases. This method analyses and evaluates hazards in order to be able to reduce or eliminate hygienic risks, such as microbiological causes, chemical causes and foreign materials from machinery or other sources.

Leveraging the benefits

Managing food safety issues comes down to knowledge about food tech- nology and about food processing. To secure Tetra Pak’s food safety focus, a core team with three clear areas of responsibility has been set up:

• to monitor new regulatory requirements related to food safety

• to identify issues of significance to Tetra Pak’s customers

• to inform about and coordinate food safety activities