September 17, 2019 / Media Mention / Food Engineering Magazine
Dan Collins, regional technical director at McCloud, contributes to Food Engineering’s article “Complying with FSMA for Pet Food Manufacturing”
Pet food equipment/process design follow human food
Bad news first: If you make pet food, have an older facility and have been putting off examining your operation in light of FSMA, rushing to comply with the new food safety rules for animal foods is probably proving to be a challenge.
Good news: If you have a newer pet food facility and/or have been evaluating your entire process and doing a gap analysis, complying with FSMA probably isn’t so onerous. With proper due diligence, compliance might even be a no-brainer.
For those who are lagging a little behind on compliance and haven’t yet had an FDA audit, there is more good news. Because most architects, engineers, system integrators (SIs) and machine/equipment builders have had a lot of experience in designing buildings, equipment and process instrumentation to comply with FSMA for human food, they’ve already built up a wealth of knowledge and experience that easily carries over into pet food manufacturing applications. And, they stand ready to help.
Dan Collins shares just how close modern pet food plants and human food plants actually are. He also touches on the one design issue that sometimes crops up from an insect vulnerability and ease-of-cleaning perspective relates to equipment design. For example, large equipment such as dryers should be elevated at least 24 inches above the floor and 36 inches away from walls to allow for detail cleaning. In addition, the equipment should have minimal flat surfaces to prevent product from accumulating on hard-to-clean ledges.