Industry News Experts to discuss water conservation, recycling
By Lisa M. Keefe
Companies rank water among the three most important inputs in beef, pork and poultry processing, right up there with energy and the raw materials themselves. Without it, the business comes to a screeching halt.
Water is becoming an ever-scarcer commodity, however. Even plants that are located in regions where water is relatively abundant can look into the not-too-distant future and see how a drought could significant damage the business.
Meatingplace will host a webinar at 1 p.m. Central on Wednesday, Dec. 15, to address the trends in industrial water consumption, and the strategies that processors can put into place to help manage consumption and conservation. Scott Hartter, vice president, Environment, Health & Safety for Cargill Meat Solutions will outline technologies, techniques and strategies that have proven to be effective, and discuss how some of them have been implemented at Cargill.
Bill Gill, assistant vice president, Environmental Affairs for Smithfield Foods, will talk about some specific steps that Smithfield has taken in the areas of water conservation and reuse.
A question-and-answer session will follow the presentations.
To register for the webinar go to meatingplace.com
Working Safely
By: Steve Sayer
Food and OSHA safety – binary stars at the workplace
If your establishment is visited by OSHA, it’s more than likely that they’ll be asking for specific programs and supporting documentation with regards to the unique occupational hazards that may exist at your establishment.
There are a number of programs and prevailing documentation that USDA inspected establishments generate on a daily basis involving their food safety programs that are clearly applicable to OSHA regulations. All you need is a dollop of creativity topped off with a shower of inventiveness.
Let’s imagine that you’re conducting pre-operational inspection prior to operations beginning. You notice that there’s a steady stream of condensation dripping from an overhead refrigeration unit onto a pallet of boxed product in the freezer; resulting with the overspill forming a slippery mini-me krakatoa ice volcano on the freezer floor.
You place hold tags on the palletized product and document the deficiency; including immediate corrective actions (re-work the product, cordon off and tag the area, and remove the burgeoning ice knoll) and implement planned future preventive measures (instruct the maintenance department to remedy the freezer unit in a timely manner) prior to informing the USDA that you’re ready to commence production.
A photocopy of the pre-operational and corrective action report of the episode described above is filed away in chronological order in your OSHA file as you place the original documents in your SSOP file for any needed future references.
Besides dodging a written non-compliance projectile from your inspector, what you’ve also accomplished was identifying and correcting a potential occupational safety hazard (a promising slip and fall somersault maneuver) that includes immediate corrective actions and future preventive measures taken. OSHA absolutely cradles this brand of documentation. So will your company’s workers compensation carrier.
Keep in mind that your HACCP system requires that you identify and eliminate any potential physical, chemical or biological hazard that may adulterate your products. Nearly the very same troika of hazards can be said regarding OSHA requirements. That is; the identification and elimination of any potential physical, chemical or biological hazards that may cause injury or illness to your employees.
Other programs and procedures that can simultaneously be potential USDA and OSHA hazards, or two-in-one’s, can be unearthed from your good manufacturing practices program, food defense program, preventive maintenance program, planned improvement program and sanitation programs.
Akin to the USDA, OSHA openly encourages daily monitoring and recordkeeping of newfound hazards, near misses and their associated immediate corrective actions including preventive measures that are generated. Ample documentation in the guise of accurate descriptions, dates, and signatures will always be the name of the game for USDA and OSHA.
Food and OSHA safety do go hand and hand and do synchronize with one another. What programs does your company perform on a daily basis that will collectively circumvent potential food and occupational hazards from occurring? I’ll post more examples later this week.
December 08, 2010
