COVID-19 Advice: Food Safety, Co-packers & Co-manufacturers

For those folks manufacturing themselves or with a co-packer, I am advising the following advice concerning safe manufacturing considering issues related to Covid-19 and the coronavirus crisis: 1) Shutdown of all non-essential visits/visitors for the next 4-8 weeks to the manufacturing site.

2) Addition of even dry chemical foot baths to address employee shoes (those working in the manufacturing facility), if possible.

3) Addition of at least (1) additional sterilization chemical for sterilizing production lines i.e. bleach and peroxide alteration – this will create a scenario where any biological contaminants are not able to become resistant to the sterilizer. Use one on day one and the other on day two at FOOD SAFE LEVELS. There is nothing to be gained by dosing lines at a higher level. It simply wastes chemicals, and any sterilization chemical needs water to work anyways. (You will be asked about Bi-quat sanitizer which is the steroid equivalent of bleach; HOWEVER, you cannot mix the two—bleach and bi-quat—as it creates a deadly off-gas scenario AND bi-quat is not organic compliant.)

4) Increased GMP monitoring of employees to include more frequent conversations with them to assess them on a person to person basis.

5) If you’re concerned, you can provide the thin masks that are not N95 compliant, BUT have the benefit of not relying on the individual to remember to cover their mouth in the event they cough or sneeze in production – remember the manufacturers coughing method —> into the elbow not the hand or forearm.

6) Finally, secondary suppliers are going to get burned through rather quickly so for those sensitive ingredients to a given company, they need to start their search now. Not when they get the OOS warning from their current suppliers.

I will advise, hopefully soon, as to status of food safety/certification audits and whether they are proceeding as planned or not. NSF reached out and made it sound as though rescheduling is possible and can be made without penalty, but I’m awaiting confirmation about that before I start telling people to shift their audits. I hope this is helpful, and stay safe everyone, Brandon Hernandez P.S. I will be posting updates as we learn more. Please bookmark our site and return for more information in the future.