Important information about food safety
The two primary objectives of hygienic and efficient automation in food production are to protect the consumer and safeguard the manufacturer’s brand. From our point of view, these are the important aspects of food safety:
Machines designed without edges or corners
In food production, the standards and directives for design and materials must be implemented – and the regulations for the critical food sector are particularly stringent. The hygienic design of machines and components is absolutely crucial. When designing our automation components for your systems, we pay strict attention to factors that promote hygiene, such as smooth surfaces and large radii.
We have compiled the most important aspects of food safety from a machine design perspective in our own white paper, which also includes a series of practical tips. It provides an overview of the relevant standards and design regulations and explains hazards, material selection and cleaning.
Thorough and fast cleaning
For manufacturers, preventing the growth of harmful microorganisms and eliminating foreign particles, whether bacteria, chemicals or corrosion particles, is a top priority. The goal is to achieve optimum hygiene with a minimum amount of cleaning agents and time – any downtime of your systems should be kept as low as possible, and OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) should be as high as possible.
When cleaning a machine or system, four factors are critical:
- Temperature
- Time
- Mechanical action/force
- Chemicals
Many safety hazards can in fact be avoided at the design stage. Because the automation components used in food production should not be susceptible to cleaning agents and disinfectants, our products are corrosion-resistant and mechanically and chemically stable. Our electric components are reliably sealed. This reduces the number of unforeseeable failures and increases the availability of your systems.
We have summarised the legal requirements applicable to cleaning and the electrical protection classes, from IP65 to IP69K, in a white paper. It also contains additional practical knowledge on what makes system components easy to clean and resistant to corrosion, as well as on how to select the correct cylinder seals, tubing and other components.
Food and compressed air quality
Great care has to be taken whenever compressed air comes into contact with food. This is because compressed air is not clean by nature. A carefully designed compressed air preparation concept is therefore required, also because you need different levels of compressed air quality at different points in the application. And every kind of food has special requirements that must be taken into consideration during its production.
The following parameters and quality classes are important for a suitable and energy-efficient compressed air preparation system for automation solutions in food production:
- Solid particles
- Water content
- Total oil content
Our white paper on compressed air preparation describes the compressed air quality classes and also illustrates filter cascades for typical applications.
Who else should know about this?
Food safety starts with the planning of the system and ends with the consumer. Solutions from Festo guarantee safety right from the start – for you and everyone involved, from food production to consumption. You can easily forward this page to them using this link.