Cleaning Agents: The Overlooked First Element of an End-to-End Sanitization Process

Dining out: One of the great pleasures of life, especially for those who hate, dislike or just don’t have the time to cook on a given day. But as much as we hate to yuck your yum, did you know the Food and Drug Administration has found that up to 60 percent of delis, fast food and full-service restaurants fail to comply with the cleaning objectives for food contact surfaces set forth by the Food Code?

These results are probably because of improper chemical sanitizer use. But the ever-important preceding cleaning step – the effective removal of soils and particles– is likely also an issue. In other words, there’s a lack of knowledge among staff on how to truly clean using products such as dish detergents, for example. 

Without this knowledge, i.e., without a proper cleaning step, both visible and invisible food soils can linger on glasses, utensils, dishes, and on general food contact surfaces. This, in turn, could make food contact sanitizers ineffective because those…