Technical Services Team Offers Higher-Level Expertise to Support Food Safety Success

Managing food safety inside of food processing plants is a complicated, ever-changing job. As a plant manager or a food safety and quality assurance (FSQA) manager, we understand the significant amount of pressure to make sure every decision and action related to food safety is validated with scientific research.

Keeping up with regulatory and audit requirements, new microbial strains, new products and technologies, and environmental changes is not an easy task. However, the planning, testing, training, and ongoing education that happens behind the scenes is ultimately what dictates the success of your program. It is critical to have a team of specially trained experts across various categories who not only stay up to date on all of the latest research, but who also have the specific insight to understand how it affects your plant and what you should be doing about it.

"An effective sanitation program is the foundation of food safety," said Scott King, Vice President of Food Safety for PSSI. "The research and attention to detail in the beginning can have a significant impact on future outcomes."

PSSI's Technical Services Team validates every step of our food safety process and execution for our partners. Our team has more than 800 combined years of food safety experience, including a corporate microbiologist, field microbiology experts, Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) practitioners and trainers, former FSQA managers, and more. We are PCQI, Food Defense, and GFSI Certified and participate across a wide range of national and regional industry organizations.

Leveraging our specialized education and experience, PSSI partners benefit from a variety of unique value-added services that ensure optimal food safety performance.

Field Audit and Support Team (FAST)

PSSI has a dedicated team of food safety experts spread across the U.S. and Canada to support our partners on a localized level. The FAST representatives have in-depth education and training to monitor and manage a variety of technical details for food safety management.

• Proactive or for-cause food safety assessments and prioritized action plans
• Benchmarking current sanitation practices
• Swab-a-thons and other environmental pathogen investigations
• Sanitation verification and validation support
• Statistical and other analytical assessment of KPIs.

Team Meeting and Training Support

Education and training are a central, ongoing part of food safety success. PSSI has a team dedicated to organizing critical information and training our teams and our customer's teams across key topics that impact the safety and success of our work. These topics include:

• Sanitary design
• Performance-based sanitation approach
• Eight steps of sanitation
• Pre-operational inspection
• Master sanitation schedules
• Microbial control equation
• Clean-in-place and assisted cleaning systems (CIP/ACS)
• Fundamentals of wet and dry sanitation
• Verification and validation of sanitation
• Root cause analysis (RCA) and corrective and preventive actions (CAPA).

Risk Assessment and Management

Many different factors can impact food safety in a plant. When making any changes or adjustments to the function of a plant, it is critical to have a food safety expert as part of the proactive planning team. PSSI's Risk Assessment and Management team provides strategic consultative services to assist our partners with proper sanitary design related to:

• Construction and major maintenance
• Out-of-standard conditions (roof leaks, drain back-ups, floods, fires, etc.)
• New plant or line startups
• Sanitary design for new equipment or infrastructure.

Research and Development

Our team at PSSI is constantly focused on continuous improvement and committed to staying at the forefront of the latest research and innovation. We partner with leading industry organizations, companies, and universities on strategic research and development projects to help solve complex food safety issues. Most recently, we have partnered with the University of Wisconsin Food Research Institute and the Center for Biofilm Engineering at Montana State University to test the effects of different chemistry on biofilm elimination. We also tested our own eight-step sanitation process to validate it for pathogen elimination.

"Education is a foundational element to food safety," said Lindsey Perry, Director of Technical Services for PSSI's Safe Foods Chemical Innovations. "We go above and beyond to make sure we are making decisions and recommendations for our partners that are supported by validated research to provide the highest level of confidence in our work."