We Didn't Have Time To Do
What We Were Supposed To Do

This article by Henry Carsberg appeared in
the March/April 2000 issue of "Food Safety" magazine.

I'd like to talk about a bone I have to pick with the corporate management of many food companies with regard to their total lack of vision and support given to advancing the company's food safety/sanitation program as a profit center.

If I were a shareholder of a large food processing company -- say, Sara Lee, for example -- I would expect the company to do three fundamental things: make a profit; produce safe, high-quality products; and carry on the good name of the company. A product recall can negatively affect all three of these areas, so it befuddles me that so many companies do not have the necessary safeguards in place to prevent product recalls from occurring.

There have been several major recalls during the past two years. Let's take a look at Sara Lee, and specifically its Bil Mar Foods subsidiary which, in December 1998, recalled $76 million (15 million pounds) of hot dogs and packaged meat products. The recall, traced to Listeria contamination in some of the product, has been linked to six deaths and 73 million illnesses (see FQ June/July 1999, p. 40). If I were a shareholder of Sara Lee, I would be smoking mad over the fact that my company lost this much money, not to mention the damage to its reputation, especially when I feel the recall could have been prevented.

The Detroit Free Press ran a series of articles on the recall in its August 23-27, 1999 editions. (The entire story is available at <http://www.freep.com/outbreak>.) As a food safety/sanitation professional, what is truly disturbing to me is the remark that, quoting from the August 23 article, "to sanitation employees, it seemed that there was hardly enough time to get the work done. [Sanitation manager] Shawn Maguire couldn't believe the pressure. Most nights were a race against dawn, as her cleaning crew and others tried to scrape, spray, and cleanse away the greasy residue left each day throughout the huge plant near Zeeland [MI]."

New on the Job.
The Free Press reported that Maguire was hired through a temporary agency in April 1998 to work at Bil Mar. She had never worked in a meat plant before. Maguire told the paper she was quickly put in charge of a sanitation team. The team worked the night shift, cleaning the hot-dog production area. The work was brutal, with dirty floors, counters, mixers, vats, conveyors, and other equipment spread throughout the expansive facility. "The sanitation crew I was working with was horrible," Maguire told the Free Press. "We were all brand new. And we learned together, and we did the best job we could do."

Workers were supposed to clean the entire processing area. They had to scrub meat residue from hard-to-reach places, then sanitize the surfaces to combat bacteria, a wily foe that Maguire knew next to nothing about. According to the Free Press, "They were expected to get the work done in time for the morning start up, but it was a struggle . . . The crew often got started late because workers who made hot dogs during earlier shifts got behind. That put sanitation crews in a squeeze to finish by morning."

Maguire told the Free Press, "We didn't have time to do what we were supposed to do." How often have regular readers of this column heard that lament?

Not Clean Enough.
Eventually, the source of the contaminating Listeria at Bil Mar was traced to dirt stirred up (and then tracked throughout the facility by workers) when a refrigeration unit was replaced. There is evidence that sanitary conditions in the processing area -- the cold, damp type of environment in which Listeria thrives -- were conducive to the growth of any stray pathogens that might have been released in the process. The old refrigeration unit itself was a major contributor to a condensation problem in the plant. An intensive clean-up ensued after the unit was replaced, but high bacterial counts began to show up on environmental swabs, and they didn't go away.

FSIS inspectors expressed concerns about inadequate cleaning and sanitation efforts at the plant, and the Free Press located USDA reports that show on July 26 and 27, well before the recall, inspectors forced cleaning crews to re-clean dirty areas along the hot-dog lines. The paper also obtained a memo from John Stephenson, a senior USDA official assigned to the plant, in which he expressed "major concern" to Bil Mar Vice President Mary Delrue. Stephenson noted that the problems weren't confined to the hot-dog lines, and that other areas of the plant "appeared to have been neglected for a significant period of time."

Delrue wrote in response on July 28 that the concerns raised "are in the process of being addressed," and pointed out several measures being taken, including moving the sanitation manager to the third shift to focus on training and awareness for both supervisory and hourly personnel. Further, manufacturing and quality-assurance managers were adjusting their work times to be present at each day's pre-op inspection, to assure compliance.

Good Reading.
I encourage you to obtain and read the full Detroit Free Press article because it presents a vivid account of the types of situations food-safety and sanitation people face every day.

What occurred at the Bil Mar plant is not an isolated incident. Processing equipment in all manner of plants is full of organics. Yes, it can be ugly after a day of production. Yes, cleaning and sanitizing is hard work. Which is why it's critically important that upper management support the sanitation effort.

I am curious as to just how much training the Bil Mar crew ever received. Of course, the standard line from management (not necessarily Bil Mar's) is, "We have such high turnover that it's hard to train people. It's a lot of effort and expenditure that is wasted if they're just going to walk out the door." When someone from the sanitation crew quits -- as Maguire did in August 1998, roughly four months after starting -- that person is really firing the management. Could it be that this 'who cares?' attitude from management is precisely why people quit the job? Sanitation is a hard and, at times, unpleasant task as it is, made doubly so when someone feels like they are just cast out there, with no support, and then given highly demanding deadlines to meet.

Many companies opt to use contract cleaning firms, but using a contract cleaner does not abdicate your responsibility. What you are really doing is turning over control of your sanitation program to someone else. You still must monitor and manage the system, but now you're doing so without adequate control. You're dealing with a written contract instead of your own food safety/sanitation manager.

If you want a food safety/sanitation program that is 'above the best', one that will protect you from recalls and the considerable losses, both tangible and intangible, they can wreak, then you must be willing to do two basic things: commit to and make an investment in eliminating high turnover on the sanitation crew, and bring your entire food-safety and sanitation program up to meet (and preferably exceed) your customers' demands. Positive attitude on managements' part, not to mention wages and benefits, plays a major role in empowering people. The more they know and understand the importance of what they are doing, the better they will do their jobs. They will respond when management cares enough to show support for them, and they, in turn, will support the company.

Henry Carsberg is a food safety/sanitation consultant with nearly 30 years of experience in food-plant sanitation. Contact him at 1-800-729-2426, ext. 260 or at <henrycat@gte.net>.