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Color Coding Guidelines
Why should you color-code?
- Help prevent cross-contamination between the following areas:
- Food contact areas with non-food contact areas
- Raw with cooked
- Known allergen products with non-allergen products
- Restrooms with a production area
- Reduce training time… workers easily understand color-coded tools.
- Ship safer product.
- Reduce cleaning tools migrating from one dept to another.
- Better credibility with current and potential customers. Informed customers are
aware a well-designed color-coding system is an important part of your
GMP's, HACCP plan and over-all food safety program.
Color-Coding in Practice
- The first step is planning. Involve both employees and management.
Management should explain the reasons for color-coding to all employees.
The best ideas for color-coding often come from production, sanitation,
and/or maintenance workers. Also, employees are more likely to be enthusiastic
about color-coding if they have been involved in the planning stages.
- The next step is to decide on what colors to use and where.
Walk through your plant and try to divide areas into zones with
different hygiene requirements. Assign a different color to each zone.
This process can take some time, with several modifications along the way.
Make sure everyone agrees to the scheme before implementation. Keep in
mind there are no standardized plans. Choose the colors that work best for
your plant. (See a sample color-coding plan at the end of these guidelines).
- Allergens - two options for managing:
- One production line runs only an allergen product - have one color assigned to this line.
- One production line alternates between an allergen and a non-allergen product.
Assign one color to the allergen product and another color to the non-allergen product.
When changing production from the allergen to the non-allergen product all cleaning tools
and containers are removed, cleaned, sanitized, and stored. Then the production line
tools and containers are replaced with the other color.
- The plan should be visual, and as simple as possible. Overly complicated plans will
be difficult for employees to understand and for supervisors to implement.
- Cleaning tools with the same color should be cleaned and stored separately.
Once cleaned, they should not come in contact with other utensils.
- All key areas should be marked with signs or posters, in multiple languages if necessary.
- Training is crucial. Behind every successful Color-Coding plan is a company
management that has provided training and motivation to improve hygiene.
A Sample Plan
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Food Contact Surfaces |
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Non-Food Contact Surfaces |
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Sanitation |
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Allergen Line |
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Restrooms |
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Maintenance |
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Waste or Trash |
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Floor Drains |
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Click Here to learn more about HACCP and Food Safety.
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