How difficult can it really be?

Cleaning, oh how I detest it…but no, I don’t have a cleaning lady. I’m too particular – or too thrifty – for that. So I do it myself instead: cleaning, sanitising, washing, rinsing, scrubbing, sterilising, disinfecting, purifying (actually, what a lot of different words there are for it!). 

After asking around amongst my friends and family, I discovered that no one sees cleaning as an enjoyable pastime. For people with a busy job, a rich social life and/or young children (with their own sports, hobbies and music lessons), cleaning is ‘a necessary evil’. A quick wipe of the kitchen worktop, some bleach down the toilet, vacuum the house: all done!

Because anyone can do it, and many people actually do (admittedly some more thoroughly than others), we all think we’re experts. How difficult can cleaning really be, anyhow? A cloth and some suds in a bucket. ‘Stop talking, just do it’…

And that’s the crux of the matter. In the food industry, cleaning is a specialism. You have to know what you’re talking about. Doing it as an afterthought is the biggest mistake you can make as an owner/manager. Hygiene and food safety are inextricably linked. Does that sound obvious? Perhaps. But that’s also the pitfall. There are still too many real-life examples of hygiene failings. It seems that companies still substantially underestimate the importance of hygiene and how to safeguard it. So have you got this part of the production process (because that’s what it is: an essential part!) under control within your company? 

I recently read that “a clean home is important for physical and mental health”. That’s very true. It feels good when the tiles in the bathroom are streak-free, the floor has been mopped, the hob is nice and shiny again and the toilet bowl is sparkling clean. And the same holds true for a clean factory, of course; as the manager of a food processing company, I’m sure you sleep a lot more soundly when you know that all your production areas are clean and disinfected. Not only that, but it’s also particularly beneficial to the physical well-being of the end customer, i.e. of the consumer...in other words, of us all.  

Judith Witte
 
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