Food Safety Focus | Floors

Hello All! 

I hope this message finds all of you and your families safe and well.

This food safety focus will focus on floors.

Wait; what do floors have to do with food safety?  Let’s find out!

Gaps in floor joint seals or large cracks and holes in the warehouse flooring can cause areas where spilled products and debris could fall in while sweeping or during spill cleanup.  It’s tough to properly cleanup and area when some loose or spilled product falls into cracks in the flooring, unless you plan on taking a vacuum cleaner in the warehouse with you to take product out of the holes in the floor!  Even then, it’s still not guaranteed you’ll get everything out, especially when dealing with some sticky puree or juice products.  

The most common areas where floors become damaged is at floor joints.  Floor joint seals can become worn out creating gaps.  These gaps should be filled in and repaired as quickly as possible, to prevent them from getting worse.  Wear and tear may happen over time; however, forklift operators who drag their forks on the ground while travelling can speed up the chipping away process at floor joints.  You can hear them clanging their forks over every floor joint down the dock or aisle as they travel.  If forks are dragging when all the way down, this could be a sign that they need adjusting.  Over time and after carrying many pallets, forklift chains can get a little slack causing the forks to lower too far.  When this happens, make maintenance aware so they can adjust the forklift chains accordingly.  Forklift operators should never let their forks drag the ground as they travel, please.

Products must never be stored directly on the floor.  If products fall off a pallet and onto the floor in the pick slot, they need to be stacked back onto the pallet and not left there, please.  I understand it may be picked up by the end of the day because of orders; however that doesn’t mean we should just leave it there.  Leaving something the wrong way builds bad muscle memory and that can lead to a poorer food safety culture in the hearts of our team members.

Thanks, for all that you do every Day!

Justin

Food Safety Manager

0
Author: Trish Metts