Food Safety Focus | Pallets, Racks & Racking

Hello All! 

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

This food safety focus will focus on the importance of pallet, racks we ship products like ice cream on and storage racking safety.

Pallets keep everything off the ground and make it easier to transport products from one place to the other; however, they are also the plate that the food products in our care sit on.  Products should always be stored on a pallet, and never stored directly onto the floor.  Who wants to eat food that has been stored on the floor in in the middle of wood chips and dust, right?  Products that fall to the floor need to be picked up right away, please. 

Pallets need to be inspected to make sure they don’t have missing boards or nails sticking up that could potentially puncture a case of product, before we use it.  That rusty nail head sticking up out of the top board of a pallet just isn’t very appetizing, as our families and the general public would agree, I’m sure

Pallets should also be inspected during receiving to make sure product hasn’t fallen through the top of the pallet and become damaged from forklift activity.  All damaged products should be removed from pallets before receiving.  Missing boards can make products stick through the top of the pallets and get in the way of the forks of the forklift, causing product damages, not to mention issues with moving the pallet.  It’s a terrible feeling when a pallet is in a top position and your forks are hitting something that fell inside the pallet, you can’t even see.

Racks and storage racking should also be inspected to make sure there is no rust or paint flaking, where it could affect the products in storage.  No one wants rust or paint particles in their food.  Foreign matter in food is a major factor in many recalls and is worth the time to prevent from happening.

Thanks for all you do every Day!

Justin

Food Safety Manager

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Author: Trish Metts