iQ® products, powered by Bell Sensing Technologies®, are the first affordable and completely integrated rodent monitoring devices. Patrick Lynch answers questions on the products and their capabilities.

1 What are iQ products?

iQ products are a full line of rodent control monitoring products that give pest management/food safety professionals the ability to use rodent monitoring technology. Whether trapping rodents with the 24/7 iQ multiple catch trap and the T-Rex iQ trap, or baiting for rodents with the Express iQ tray, all iQ products have Bell Sensing’s patented technology fully integrated inside the product.

2 How do iQ products communicate rodent activity?

iQ products timestamp and record all rodent activity at accounts. This data is communicated to mobile devices with Bluetooth technology. The choice of Bluetooth keeps the power of pest control in the hands of the pest control specialist on site. This technology makes iQ products affordable to use at any type of food safety account and does not require expensive gateway equipment or Wi-Fi passwords.

3 How can Food Safety Professionals use technology for trapping rodents?

The most time-consuming task pest management and food safety professionals encounter when dealing with rodents is properly placing and subsequently checking both multiple catch and snap traps. Rodents travel in hard-to-reach areas, which means placing traps in the most effective locations can be difficult to reach without ladders and safety equipment. We know from our customers’ feedback that the vast majority of traps each month do not have activity or catches. Use of the T-Rex iQ or 24/7 iQ enables those managing rodent control at each facility to never check an empty trap again. Automatic recordkeeping replaces routine and necessary paperwork, and the data is transformed into easy to digest historical and trend reports.

4 How can food safety professionals use technology for baiting for rodents?

To keep up with rodents, pest management/food safety professionals must turn into detectives, where they look for evidence to paint a picture of rodent activity at their facility since its last walkthrough. Express iQ bait stations communicate whether or not there has been verifiable rodent activity and how heavy the rodent activity has been in each specific bait station since the last visit. This finally gives the facilites manager and pest management professional the information they need for better inspections, quicker decision making, superior customer service and world class IPM.

5 What additional problems do iQ products solve?

Food safety professionals are saddled with the same challenges all industries are experiencing: customer retention, safety and job satisfaction. iQ products instantly record and keep a more accurate pulse on rodent issues at the facility. This improves customer retention as proof that the rodent control service program is working and will reduce rodent issues. Using knowledge gained from iQ products, facility managers or pest control managers will no longer have to climb on ladders or be unwilling to place traps where they are needed most. This will increase both the quality of the rodent control at the account and will be a more rewarding and satisfying career path for these professionals, in which they will never have to check an empty trap again.

Patrick Casey, Regional Sales Manager, Best Sanitizers, Inc., provides guidance and best practices to improve hand hygiene.

1 Why is hand hygiene important in a food processing facility?

The CDC estimates that each year 48 million people get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die of foodborne illnesses. Practicing hand hygiene is crucial in a food processing environment because it can help reduce cross-contamination. Contaminated hands can transfer pathogens to surfaces, utensils, and even finished food products. Not only does poor hand hygiene increase the risk of product contamination, but it can also potentially threaten employee wellness. Many facilities are experiencing staff shortages, making it imperative for their employees to stay healthy to keep the plant running.

2 What is the goal of hand hygiene?

The goal of hand hygiene is to reduce the number of pathogens on the hands to the smallest number possible. Hand sanitizing after washing further reduces the colony forming units (CFUs), making it more difficult for germs to transfer on to surfaces and finished product. A proper hand hygiene program is not complete without hand sanitization.

3 What should I look for when choosing a quality hand sanitizer?

Companies that never made hand sanitizer before began manufacturing during the pandemic. Although their efforts were needed, it created a number of products that were not specifically formulated to meet the high standards of the food processing industry.

Food plants should look for alcohol-based hand sanitizers engineered specifically to their industry. Best Sanitizers' hand sanitizer is manufactured to the highest standards in a cGMP, FDA and EPA/FIFRA compliant factory. Alpet® E3 Plus Hand Sanitizer Spray’s 71% Ethanol formula is 99.9999% effective in killing pathogens. It is fragrance-free and formulated with emollients to keep hands healthy. As a spray, it goes on light, and leaves hands feeling silky, not heavy and sticky.

4 How can I show continuous improvement?

Depending on SOPs, the answer could be different for every plant. Best Sanitizers, Inc. helps facilities identify ways to improve their hand hygiene practices by evaluating the current hand soap, hand sanitizer, and training program used in the facility.

5 How can I ensure food production workers are practicing proper hand hygiene?

Trainings are crucial to ensure employees understand how to practice proper hand hygiene. Best Sanitizers, Inc. offers on-site and webinar-based hand hygiene trainings for food and beverage processors, pharmaceutical, and packaging plants. Schedule a training by calling 888-225-3267.

Glove guru Steve Ardagh, CEO and founder of specialist glove supplier Eagle Protect, has been the go-to industry resource reporting on the food safety implications of the pandemic glove supply and demand deficit. As demand slowed and the industry has been flooded with poor quality and counterfeit gloves, how can you ensure you are purchasing truly food safe gloves?

1 Are FDA food compliant gloves really food safe?

Not many people know the FDA Food Compliance — FDA (21 CFR 177) — is a limited, single test completed infrequently by the factory, simply measuring the migration of specified types of glove polymers. After testing is passed, glove purchasers must trust the factories, mostly based in Southeast Asia, to continue manufacturing gloves to that specification — but this is easily abused.

2 What are the Good Manufacturing Practice requirements for gloves?

Even scarier is that the FDA Food Compliance testing does not measure glove cleanliness nor the number of glove failures (holes). However, the FDA’s Current Good Manufacturing Practice states that gloves handling food need to be clean, sanitary and intact. This disharmony between the GMP and FDA glove compliance is a very dangerous Food Safety Gap, one that Eagle Protect is mitigating with our unique and proprietary glove analysis.

3 Is Eagle Protect’s proprietary testing really essential?

Yes. As a calibration for our gloves, we tested hundreds of samples of 26 other branded food and medical grade gloves and found over 260 different viable pathogen species. These included E. Coli, Salmonella, Listeria, (as well as fungus, mold and even feces) and many more foodborne illness and food spoilage pathogens, capable of causing disease to the glove wearer, and transferring to the handled food.

4 Can poor quality gloves affect food businesses?

Yes. We actually gained a customer recently after they had a recall due to contaminated gloves. The gloves were FDA food compliant but contained cheap toxins which contaminated the handled products. This was most likely due to the factory changing raw material ingredients, after achieving FDA compliance testing. This is a costly example and can also affect a company’s brand reputation.

5 What is Eagle Protect’s glove difference?

We can guarantee a range of our gloves are truly food safe. Our multilayered proprietary testing ensures our gloves meet GMP standards by being clean, free from harmful toxins and pathogens, have an AQL of 1.5, with consistent raw material ingredients and manufacturing quality — this is tested in each glove container. Eagle Protect mitigates the potential food safety risk of poorly made and poorly sourced gloves.

Having accurate allergen information on your label is not only an important part of regulatory requirements, but also a critical piece of information for the millions of people who experience food allergies. Stephanie Bear, an Associate Chemist from Nestlé Quality Assurance Center Dublin, discusses the importance of allergen testing.

1 What is the difference between a food allergy, food intolerance and Celiac disease?

A food allergy occurs when the immune system reacts to a certain food. A food intolerance is caused by an enzyme deficiency. Celiac disease is a genetic autoimmune disease where the ingestion of gluten damages the intestine.

2 What foods are people allergic to?

The United States has eight major food allergen categories. The “Big 8” includes milk, egg, peanut, tree nuts, wheat, soy, fish, and crustacean shellfish. Sesame will be added to this list in 2022 making it nine. With over 100 different foods types reported as allergies, only these nine cause the majority and most serious reactions in the U.S.

3 Why is it important to test for food allergens at my facility? What types of things can I test?

The smallest trace amounts can cause severe reactions. It might seem like a small, dust-sized crumb, but it could contaminate an entire batch. Cross contamination of your goods can happen anywhere along the supply chain no matter how great your management plan. There are several areas of interest to test for allergens at your facility, you can test anything from raw materials, finished materials, CIP rinse water, cleaning efficiency, transport, storage, and any other areas of concerns.

4 When should allergen testing occur?

Testing should occur for any cleaning process, any change in your production that can impact allergen presence such as a new line or a raw material change. Once you have an allergen management plan in place at your facility, you will want to set up allergen testing to verify that the plan you have in place is working for your facility. Testing may also be needed to support a HACCP plan or an allergen free claim.

5 What do my results mean?

Regulatory guidance in the U.S. is very clear for gluten with a limit at 20 mg/kg. For other allergens, the limit of quantification from the kit manufacturers may be used to take the necessary management decision both for validation and verification purposes.