Water Quality and Food Safety – III

Water Quality and Safety for Food Production

Globalization and urbanization has created many changes in consumer habits, including travel, which have created various complexities in global food trade. Thus increased purchases as well as consumption of water and foods which may be prepared in public places is one of the major root causes where globalization has triggered growing consumer demand for a wider variety of foods, resulting in an increasingly complex and longer global food supply chains. As the world’s population grows, intensification and industrialization of agriculture and animal production to meet increasing demand for food has created both opportunities and challenges for food safety where supply of clean and hygienic potable water for the production has become a major challenge due to increased scarcity of water as well as rapid ground water contamination due to the increased industrial activities as well as lack of concern from the society. Nonetheless, climate change is also predicted to impact food safety, where temperature changes modify food safety risks associated with food production, storage and distribution. These challenges put greater responsibility and challenges on food producers and handlers to ensure food safety. Local incidents can quickly evolve into international emergencies due to the speed and range of product distribution. Serious foodborne disease outbreaks have occurred on every continent in the past decade, often amplified by globalized trade.

Considering the water, most precious commodity on earth, unsafe water poses global health threats, endangering everyone. Infants, young children, pregnant women, the elderly and those with an underlying illness are particularly vulnerable where 220 million children every year contract diarrhoeal diseases and 96 000 die. Water quality is referred as chemical, physical, biological and radiological characteristics of water which is a measure of the condition of water relative to the requirements of one or more biotic species or any human need or purpose and these set of requirements are considered as relevant standards in many occasions that use for compliance criteria. Thus most common water quality criteria are WHO guidelines. 

  

Today, water quality is increasingly becoming a major concern and recognized as a major factor in the water crisis. In past, poor water quality has been principally associated with public health concerns through transmission of water-borne diseases which are still major problems in Africa and in many other parts of the developing world. However, the contribution of degraded water to the water crisis is also measured in loss of beneficial use in recent years, where water that is lost for beneficial human, agricultural, and ecological uses due to excessive pollution by pathogens, nutrients, heavy metals and acid mine drainage, trace organic contaminants such as agricultural pesticides and pesticides associated with wood treatment, and localized high levels of oil and related pollutants, including salt, hydrocarbons, metals and other toxic wastes, and high levels of turbidity and sedimentation from excessive loadings of sediments.

Water is routinely used in food production as an ingredient, for cleaning, sanitation and manufacturing purposes, where source of supply, treatments and uses of water by food businesses, and maintenance of safe water supply is very important to ensure production of safe and quality foods. Thus following guidelines are very important while considering a water supply for the food production.

Water quality – In modern food processing, the manufacturing facility is required to have an adequate supply of drinking water (i.e. potable water) available for use in food production to ensure foods are not contaminated. Drinking water is water fit for human consumption (e.g. drinking, cooking and food preparation) and in principle must be free from microorganisms and other contaminants that may endanger public health.

Water source – Drinking water is supplied to the food manufacturing facility either publically by local government authorities or privately by the food business itself. Across globe, majority of drinking water supplied to the food industry, through public supplies, but the source of the water used to supply the drinking water may be a variety of sources including surface water (e.g. streams, rivers, and lakes), groundwater (e.g. natural springs, wells), rainwater and seawater (treated at a desalination plant). Thus, source of water generally determines the quality of the water where treatments are required in most of the time to ensure compliance to drinking water standards before it is safe to be used in food production (i.e. safe for human consumption).

Water treatment – Water treatment methods are used to remove pathogens and impurities which may otherwise be harmful to human health or aesthetically unpleasant. Thus, treatment processes may vary depending on the source water, but in generic treatment models, an absorbent material is added to the water to bind dirt and form heavy particles (coagulation) that settle to the bottom of a water storage tank. The water is then filtered to remove even smaller particles. Finally, a small amount of disinfectant (e.g. chlorine), at a level safe for human consumption, may be added to kill any remaining microorganisms. However, advanced systems sometimes use all these methods in combination as well as new technologies such Hydrogen Peroxide and UV light to kill the microbes. The provision and treatment of private water supplies used by the food industry is the responsibility of the specific food business using the supply. Furthermore, private water supplies will require treatment and ongoing verification following treatment (e.g. laboratory testing) to ensure they are fit for human consumption and can be used in food production.

Prerequisites of Water

HACCP, ISO 22000, FSSC 22000, BRC, GMP and other available food safety standards or food safety standards which use as their core as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) are usually control its non-critical or low risk areas with prerequisite programs which regulates the safety of water and ice used in food processing.

The following has been drawn from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) HACCP regulation for the juice industry found in 21 CFR Part 123: (1) Sanitation controls. Each processor shall have and implement a sanitation standard operating procedure (SSOP) that addresses sanitation conditions and practices before, during, and after processing. The SSOP shall address: (a) Safety of the water that comes into contact with food or food contact surfaces or that is used in the manufacture of ice.

The Good Manufacturing Practices found in 21 CFR Part 110 also contains similar wording. The question is, “What can be done to assure that water quality is good?” The regulations state that “the water supply shall be sufficient for the operations intended and shall be derived from an adequate source. Any water that contacts food or food-contact surfaces shall be safe and of adequate sanitary quality. Running water at a suitable temperature, and under pressure as needed, shall be provided in all areas where required for the processing of food, for the cleaning of equipment, utensils, and food packaging materials or for employee sanitary facilities.” Most processors draw water from public water supplies or wells. The assumption is that these are safe sources but this needs to be verified. There are many operations around the world that draw from rivers or other sources and must treat water on site to assure its sanitary quality.

There are many operations that have additional treatment systems rather than generic treatments. One may be passing water through a reverse osmosis (RO) system to ensure that the water is cleaner or of better chemical quality when used as an ingredient, while others might chlorinate or ozonate their process waters, and there are those who pass water through ultraviolet (UV) light systems. Each of these kind of systems need to be included on the company’s preventive maintenance program. Keep records on filters or ultraviolet sources which needs to be changed regularly to ensure that the system will function as designed, which will keep water quality high and/or reduce the microbial load in that water. The water delivery systems must use non-corrosive easy to maintain systems while ensuring the appropriate pressure, insulation where necessary has been provided. i.e., if a line contains a washer or washing step, the water pressure must be high enough to properly wash the product or unit operation. Operations that have problems with poor water pressure may be forced to install holding tanks with pressure pumps to assure both adequate supply and pressure.

Most food processors use hot water for cleaning and other operations where processors need to assure establish systems are providing sufficient quantities of heat water for all production requirements. Nonetheless these systems must have equipped with adequate controls which can be adjusted within the given parameters. For example, cleaners work best within set temperature ranges.

Considering the preventive maintenance initiatives, the first step is to be sure that there are complete and updated plumbing diagrams, which is mandatory to understand how fresh water comes into the factory, its source and understanding water and wastewater flow as well as most important, that there are no cross-connections with sewage or waste water lines. This is something that most new plants would have, but is not as common in older facilities. The plant engineers and/or maintenance people should conduct an internal audit to verify that plumbing diagrams are accurate and up to date, because experience shows that when plants are expanded or are modified, these operations tend not to make the necessary changes to their plumbing blueprints. Processors should also examine all water lines and water handling systems to be sure that there is no potential for contamination within the operation with following questions in mind:

Do you have back-flow prevention devices on water lines? Are there air gaps between spigots or hoses and water sources?

Are hoses handled properly so that their use in the process will not contaminate product, equipment or ingredients?

Operators as well as workers in the production floor need to be trained on how to handle and store hoses, because line workers often drag hoses across the floor, over equipment and use them to fill blending or mix tanks, where wastewater and soil may be end up in the mix. Furthermore, the greatest potential concern of contamination is cross-connections, which need to be verified through plumbing diagrams and there should be no cross- connections and diagrams must be accurate and current.

The facility should be audited for water and plumbing systems, which will help to determine whether there are any “dead spots” or dead-ends in the lines. Further, the water lines need to remain clean and need to be constantly flushed. Unused lines off a main or a large reservoir/storage tanks below the floor may not be flushed properly, where water remaining in these dead areas can create potential health and quality problems. Usually, the back-flow devices are designed to prevent dirty or contaminated water from flowing towards a clean source, while allowing water to flow in one direction, where internal auditors must verify the records and check on lines as they can disappear, because back-flow prevention has become a hot spot in third-party audits. The plumbing diagrams also need to include all water systems and the locations of the back-flow devices in the system, which should be an easily accessible back-flow device on all water mains coming into the plant. There are plants where the lines are under ground and, therefore, inaccessible. Yet, these plants tell the auditors that they are checked annually. Air gaps are also basic good sanitary design. Water sources and tanks must be separated.

Considering the ice requirements in food processing operations, it is important to know how ice is manufactured, stored and used, which must be included in plant’s water management program. Usually some workers in food industry believe that frozen water cannot be a source of contamination, because it is very low in temperature which is a myth. In many operations, especially in the seafood industry, water for chilling foods or blending is produced in large ice-makers that deposit the ice in bins, where workers often wade into ice bins with shovels to fill bins with ice for production use. This is not a good practice since that ice may be used to chill foods and the ice-makers also need to be cleaned and sanitized on a regular schedule. Thus operators need to sanitize their ice makers on a weekly basis and establish a regular maintenance program for the water filters. It is a good practice to use a sticker or tag on the filter which indicates when the filter was serviced and when it is due to be serviced again. Records of filter maintenance and ice-maker cleaning and sanitizing should be maintained in the plant to document that the work has been done. To further assure the quality of ice used in production, processors are now treating water used for ice making with ozone. This helps assure that the ice is of good microbiological quality and can even help control the microbial load on certain products.