Cleanliness and hygiene in foodservice and production is a high stakes consideration. It’s not just about business risk, there are also legal obligations and the very real possibility of harming people through your actions, that’s why it’s important to never leave anything to chance in your food production area.

The USDA’s HACCP regulation puts sanitation—cleaning and sanitizing—in its proper perspective:

Sanitation maintains or restores a state of cleanliness and promotes hygiene for prevention of foodborne illness.

It is an essential prerequisite program for food safety. The Preventive Controls Regulation for Human Food found in 21 CFR Part 117 further underscores the importance of this element. Preventive controls are defined as:

“…those risk-based, reasonably appropriate procedures, practices and processes that a person knowledgeable about the safe manufacturing, processing, packing or holding of food would employ to significantly minimize or prevent the hazards identified under the hazard analysis that are consistent with the current scientific understanding of safe food manufacturing, processing, packing or holding at the time of the analysis.”