A Commonsense Approach to Food Transport Hygiene
Produce is transported using many means and by many
routes. The means of conveyance may include RTP trays,
pallets, shippers, dollies, roll cages and a wide range of
vehicle load compartments involving dedicated, shared-
user, sub-contract, hired, ambient, multi-temperature
and temperature controlled HGV vehicles.
Produce may travel from the field to a pack-house, on to
a consolidation point or Distribution Centre and from
there to a vast and disparate collection of small, medium
and large independent and supermarket retailers. While
the majority of food is purchased instore by consumers
utilising baskets or trolleys, online shoppers goods may
be collated in trays and delivered via smaller commercial
vehicles.
Keeping produce safe during transportation is a vital
element in the food chain of custody and is often the last
step in ensuring high quality and safe is available to the
consumer whether purchased instore or online.
Given the many different equipment types, countless
vehicle journeys, cross docking and associated handling,
there clearly exists very real potentials for food to
become contaminated when coming in to contact with
many of the surfaces involved. These potentials may well
compromise carefully managed hygiene measures taken
earlier in the food chain and it is therefore of critical
importance that appropriate actions are taken to control
microbiological contamination during food conveyance
and transportation. As a minimum, surface sanitisation
should be readily available to ensure that foods remain
safe up to and after purchase by the consumer.
Consumers are completely reliant on the panoptic
application of food safety regulation and best practice to
maintain the quality levels of the food they buy and to
protect them against food contamination risks.
Therefore, it might appear reasonable to assume that food
producers, equipment providers, logistics and transport
companies, and particularly retailers rigorously apply and
monitor vehicle and equipment food hygiene and regulatory
compliance.
It is of significant and growing concern that this is far from
the case.
Recent research confirms that too many equipment, logistics
and transport service providers are unaware of both their
regulatory obligations and basic food transport hygiene
requirements.
It is entirely unacceptable that the excellent audited
standards achieved by growers and producers earlier in the
chain should be compromised by consistent failures in the
food transportation phase. Such failures to uphold food
safety obligations clearly puts the quality of food and the
consumer at increased risk.
Picture a grower who invests in and applies food safe
standards, who provides hygienic protective wear for
employees, who is strictly audited on a regular basis and is
justly proud of the high-quality products they produce. It is
highly possible this grower could receive contaminated trays,
pallets or roll-cages in which to pack his produce. These
could well be delivered by a contaminated vehicle. When
filled the trays, pallets or roll-cages could be collected by a
different contaminated vehicle which may be part of a 3PL
fleet or a diverted sub-contract vehicle. The vehicles
previous load may have been fertilizer, raw meat or waste
packaging. No questions will have been asked. No records of
any hygienic cleaning will be available and no record of prior
loads maintained. These are regulatory requirements.
It is extraordinary that retailers internal and external
audit processes do not hold equipment providers,
logistics and transport companies to the same food safe
standards they require from growers and producers.
Retailers and enforcement authorities appear to tolerate
a lower standard of hygiene or evidence of diligence from
these service providers, alarmingly ignoring the clear
opportunity for food quality impairment and consumer
risk.
There appears to be no requirement for the quality and
safety of food to be upheld by adherence to regulatory
and best practice standards in the transportation phase.
Many food conveyance and transport activities are totally
uncontrolled and operate outside food safety laws.
Certain logistics driven initiatives now operate in direct
contravention of food safety legislation and potentially
increase consumer risk on a daily basis.
For well over ten years we have seen the uninhibited use
of food delivery vehicles for the backloading of waste
from retail stores on a monumental scale. It is
incomprehensible that the retailers or transport
operators involved would not be aware that waste
products, contaminated plastics, cardboard and out-of-
date foodstuffs have a high propensity to contaminate
the next full load of food on that vehicle. It is a basic
regulatory requirement that where such practices exist
vehicles must be sanitised between loads yet only one
major UK retailer is known to be compliant in this area.
The regulations are simple. If a vehicle designated to carry
food then carries a non-food load, this load is regarded as a
potential contaminant and food safety regulations require
that the vehicle must be sanitised before it carries food
again. This commonsense regulatory requirement is
designed to ensure vehicles have not carried cargoes that
may contaminate produce.
Properly sanitised equipment and vehicle cargo areas will
not only uphold produce quality but will help prevent
contamination and deterioration of produce in transit,
increasing shelf-life.
There is a reasonable expectation that companies who hold
themselves out as having expertise and specialist capabilities
in equipment management, logistics support activities and
food transportation should, as a minimum, be able to
demonstrate appropriate levels of food safe best practice
and regulatory awareness throughout their management
teams.
All food related equipment, logistics and transport service
providers should understand contamination risks and
demonstrate an awareness and capability of how they
provide protection and prevention measures.
Ideally a robust food transportation policy focused on
produce safety should be developed. Such a policy should
include requirements for all transportation vehicles in all
given situations, to include sub-contract vehicles and the
necessity to maintain records of prior loads for all vehicles.
The necessity to include hired and sub-contract delivery
vehicles further illustrates the common-sense nature of food
safe transportation requirements.
The services provided by equipment, logistics and transport
service providers may be varied in type and disparate in
nature but all stakeholders within the food supply chain play
a vital and inescapable role in abiding by commonsense food
safety guidelines and regulations designed to optimise food
quality and protect consumers.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT LIAM JENNINGS
Email: liam.jennings@foodchaincompliance.com