Combattere il biofilm: strategie e sfide relative all’igiene nell'industria alimentare  

Mikkel Svold (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to Behind Clean Lines, an NGI podcast on food safety and hygienic design. Today, we are once again joined by Deb Smith, who is a global hygienic, who is a global hygiene specialist, that was what I meant to say, and biologist, of course, at Vikan. And at Vikan, they do cleaning equipment for the food industry.

(00:29):
Welcome back.

Deb Smith (00:30):
Thank you. Thanks for having me again.

Mikkel Svold (00:32):
Now, in the last episode that the two of us re-recorded, that we talked about biofilm and how biofilm was different from just singular microbes. Maybe just a really quick recap on what's the difference between microbes, free-floating microbes, and biofilm. Just really quick.

Deb Smith (00:53):
Yeah, sure. Single-celled microbes are quite easy for us to deal with in terms of cleaning and disinfection. Biofilms are a lot tougher because it means that the microbes have got together and they formed colonies and have covered themselves with a protective slime, so they then become a lot more tricky to deal with.

Mikkel Svold (01:13):
And if you want to listen to more also crazy stories of biofilm, go back and find the former episode with Deb because that was really interesting.

(01:24):
Today, we are focusing a little bit less on the theoretical side, what it is, and more on what can you actually do. And I think a good place to start is to look at how do food companies out there, how do they actually combat biofilm right now? What are the methods that you see?

Deb Smith (01:45):
Yeah, so I suppose the most fundamental one is just good cleaning and disinfection protocols. And there's a number of techniques you can use depending on what you're trying to clean. You've got foaming for large areas or open surfaces. You've got CIP for pipework and closed vessels. And then, of course, you've got manual cleaning, which you can use for anything, really, just to give you that added bit of direct input, I suppose. So yeah, lots of different cleaning and disinfection methods, which really form the basis of what we do.

Mikkel Svold (02:23):
And is there a clear guideline to which method you would use in what situation? Or is it something that you would more or less decide in the specific food factory? Or is it even something that varies from day to day from person to person, shift to shift?

Deb Smith (02:41):
Yes, sir is the answer to all those questions. It will depend on many different things, including the type of food that you're producing. That will sometimes dictate the type of cleaning you do. The type of equipment that you're cleaning, say, closed vessels and pipework, you really have to use CIP because you can't use something like foaming. Sometimes you can shut a factory down for a period of time to do a deep clean, and then the cleaning might be different to what you do on a daily basis, so you might strip equipment down to a literally nut and bolt level, so you can do that deep clean. So yeah, that cleaning and disinfection can alter, depending on many, many things.

Mikkel Svold (03:26):
And now, if you are a food factory or if you are responsible for the production of any, well, let's say meat in your factory, you mentioned something called a joint task force. Can you explain what that is and what does it mean to biofilm?

Deb Smith (03:45):
Right, so I think one of the most common questions I'm asked is, "What's the thing that I can do to get rid of biofilms?" And I think what people are after is a silver bullet to cure all the problems. And my response is always that there is no silver bullet. It really isn't-

Mikkel Svold (04:02):
That's a little bit disappointing, isn't it?

Deb Smith (04:04):
It is. It would be so lovely if that was the case. It really would.

(04:08):
But so we really do need to employ a number of different things, and I think we touched on it in the last podcast, but it was start off by having equipment and premises that you actually can clean that don't have the nooks and crannies where the bacteria can hide and be difficult to remove. That's really the first point. Unfortunately, a lot of factories have to deal with old buildings and old equipment where that's more of a challenge.

(04:39):
And then you just have to do the best you can with the next stage, which is your cleaning and disinfection. And there, you need to make sure you have validated methods, so methods that you have tried and tested that you know will work, and make sure that they're done by people who know what they're doing, so they'll be trained and conscientious, and that you check that they've done it properly with verification of some sort, where you're swabbing to check that they'll... Even visual inspection is pretty good most times.

(05:13):
And then you need to have that maintenance program where, if you have checked your equipment when you first installed it, over time it's going to wear and tear, so you need to check it again to make sure that maybe seals have got past their best and need to be replaced so that they don't cause a trap point for bugs and biofilm formation. And then just have a general culture of food safety in the factory, where the people themselves take responsibility for what they're doing and are conscientious about what they do, report issues to make sure that the level of hygiene is maintained at all times.

Mikkel Svold (05:55):
And the task force that you're talking about, is that what you would call all of this together as a bundle? Or is it a team of five people sitting together designing how things are set up and how things are done?

Deb Smith (06:10):
I think it's a combination of the two, really. The joint task force, from my original perspective, was including the hygienic design through to the food safety culture, all of which need to be part of what you do. But to be able to do that successfully, you probably need to bring together your sanitation team, your technical teams, your engineering teams so that they can talk to each other about the microbiological risk versus the engineering challenges and what standards need to be achieved. There is definitely two phases to that joint task force approach.

Mikkel Svold (06:54):
And is that very common? To assemble that team, to get those people in the same room, is that something you see often or is it something that, well, you can always want to see it more, but is it common?

Deb Smith (07:06):
Well, we do actually already do that through our HACCP teams. HACCP is a great example where we bring all those people together to think about critical control points in the food processing. What we need to do is start using that similar approach for the environmental control as well, so the buildings and the drains areas where the biofilms are very often found. And actually, the new GFSI benchmark standards related to hygienic design do talk about setting up a task force, a risk assessment task force, to do this in relation to the fabric of the buildings and the equipment. They're now in BRCGS and FSSE 22000, which are, I think, the two biggest global food safety standards running at the moment.

Mikkel Svold (07:59):
I'm wondering, as I often experience, when you put people together in a team and they have different backgrounds, different responsibilities, different educations, not all needs are aligned, so not everything they want to do matches what everyone else wants to do. What kinds of contradictions do you often see in those kinds of teams?

Deb Smith (08:30):
Often engineers and hygiene people have big contradictions because the engineers will want something that also complies with health and safety regulations, for instance, so they want guarding on things and they want to secure things so that they can't be opened. And obviously, from a hygiene point of view, you want to be able to get into those things and dismantle them quickly and easily so that you can clean them and prevent biofilms forming. I think that's probably one of the biggest contradictions that I see between engineers and hygiene teams.

Mikkel Svold (09:05):
Yeah, it's also something that really calls for compromises on both sides, I'm guessing.

Deb Smith (09:10):
Yep, and I think that's where the equipment manufacturers can come in and the building manufacturers as well. If you have that team of people together, they can listen to the pros and cons of each team's arguments and they can work together to actually come up with a good solution. So yeah, I think it's very important that the equipment and building manufacturers are also incorporated into those teams to discuss those issues.

Mikkel Svold (09:36):
Yeah. And probably you want something, at least every once in a while, you want a C-level person joining as well, just to inform, well, the leadership of the factory. No?

Deb Smith (09:49):
Yes, absolutely. I think senior management should be involved at all stages. Maybe not at every meeting, but they should certainly be responsible for providing the resources to do these things and being made aware of the consequences if they don't, which can be hugely damaging. Again, we mentioned in the last podcast about some of the food industry cases and the cost of that. I can't actually remember, but we're talking millions of dollars of damage in terms of financial and reputational loss to a company if they get it wrong.

Mikkel Svold (10:25):
Yeah, I could imagine that could be really devastating for a company.

(10:28):
Now, when we talk about solutions for this, let's try and look in some of the strategies that you see out there and maybe some of the technologies that are coming up right now for the food industry to take on. What do you see of most interesting, well, strategies or technology emerging right now?

Deb Smith (10:49):
Some of the new stuff that's coming up, well, I say new, it's been around for a while now, to be honest, enzymatic detergents. They seem to be really making progress in terms of biofilms, certainly. The enzymes are really good at breaking down that matrix structure of the biofilms, so the thing that makes them strong compared with single cells. That's a good way to go.

(11:15):
On a more research level, I think things like cold plasma seem to be quite interesting. Again, they use electrochemical emissions to break down the matrix and also to kill the bacteria, which is so they clean and they disinfect. But I haven't seen anything on a commercial level that works with that, really. Really, I'd just have to go back to that joint task force approach, just working your way through that.

Mikkel Svold (11:48):
And if you want to implement that, where would step one be?

Deb Smith (11:53):
Oh, well, step one would definitely be looking at the equipment and the buildings for hygienic design. As I said, not everyone has a brand new factory with perfect equipment, so you have to then think about where your biggest risks come from and target those. So, which is your worst piece of equipment? Where have you had the most problems before? And see what you can do to mitigate those risks. Maybe get some investment to buy some new equipment.

(12:23):
Then do your validation for your cleaning, so develop those validated cleaning methods. Make sure that the chemicals, the equipment, and the processes and the people that you're using can work to get rid of the problem. And make sure when you have developed that method, that it's applied and does the job by checking with swabbing.

(12:48):
And then really investing in the people that are doing that on a daily basis with the training and the support. Just telling them they're doing a good job goes a long way. Hygiene team quite often work at night. Nobody's there to say anything to them at the time, but if it goes wrong, they're certainly the ones that get it in the neck when it all goes bad. So, appreciate the hygiene team. Actually, they're your front line of hygiene defense, so they need to be appreciated as such, and trained as such.

Mikkel Svold (13:21):
Yeah. What do you think is the hardest to implement?

Deb Smith (13:26):
The food safety culture is definitely the hardest thing to implement because it's a bit like getting people to wash their hands. We saw it in COVID. Everyone knew they had to wash their hands, and the driver behind that was obviously to maintain people not being sick. But as soon as COVID went or disappeared from the news, I think hand washing probably went out the window. So, it's continual reinforcement of that food safety message, which is quite tough in a busy, pressured food production environment.

Mikkel Svold (14:04):
Yeah, and also an environment where you have a lot of contractors, you have short-term employees, and you have all those kinds of, well, employee constellations, I'm guessing.

Deb Smith (14:17):
Transient workforce, very much so. Also, you might not have a workforce where the first language is the language in the area that they're producing, so communication can be a challenge at times. Yeah, it's very difficult. People are always the trickiest thing in any environment. That's where the biggest challenges lie.

Mikkel Svold (14:40):
I think the takeaway from this episode would be take a walk with your engineering and your cleaning teams through the factory, and then look at what you ought to optimize first and make a prioritized list, and then start with your probably HR managers and see if you can push a culture. That's what I'm hearing also.

Deb Smith (15:02):
Yeah, definitely. I think from my point of view, walking through a factory on the night shift with a hygiene team is always the most enlightening thing, so that's a good place to start.

Mikkel Svold (15:12):
Yeah. Deb, Ms. Smith, thank you so much for joining us today. It was a real pleasure.

Deb Smith (15:20):
Thank you very much for asking me.

Mikkel Svold (15:23):
And to the listeners out there, if you like this episode,
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(15:49):
That's all for this episode. Thank you so much for listening.