You would be hard pressed to find a food company that doesn’t provide some form of food safety, food defense, and occupational safety training for its employees in today’s industry. But, the same training is not as freely available for contractors, such as equipment technicians, pest control operators, vending service personnel, uniform suppliers, etc. Many contracted workers are not familiar with food safety, food defense, occupational safety, and other rules specific to the facilities they service. Maybe it’s time to evaluate your training program to ensure that contractors understand that they are expected to follow the same policies that your employees follow.
Here are a few real life examples of contractor practices observed in food plant settings:
- Welding and grinding in the warehouse near pallets of products with no protection between the pallets and work area
- Carrying items, such as tools, pens, etc., in shirt pockets
- Propping open external doors that open into the facility
- Cutting PVC pipes in a packaging room and not containing the dust from the saw
- Filing PVC pipes on top of product totes
- Storing non food-grade chemicals in production rooms next to packaging and food items
- Using finished product containers as trash containers in production rooms
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