By Jeremy Adler, Sr. RD&E Program Lead for Food Safety at Ecolab

Water is life. We tend to hear that in a positive light. But the truth is water gives life to all sorts of unwanted and pathogenic life, as well. That’s why “dry” or low-moisture cleaning and sanitization has become such a hot topic in F&B production—particularly for ready-to-eat (RTE) meat products, where the entire operation is geared toward minimizing unwanted moisture. Dry sanitization, as a way to reduce moisture known to increase microbiological counts, has incredible potential to mitigate food safety and quality risks.

Making the move to dry sanitization isn’t easy. But as more organizations prioritize the food safety and quality benefits of this shift, we’re seeing a wave of innovation that’s making dry sanitization more achievable than ever.

Beating biofilm in a dry environment

Biofilm presents the biggest source of microbiological risk in most food production environments. But there’s a catch-22: Many of the conventional methods of fighting biofilm involve large amounts of water during the cleaning, rinsing and sanitization steps. Plants often end up with residual water in the production environment that feeds—rather than fights—the biofilm problem.

The good news is that, with the growing focus on biofilm in our industry, we’ve seen some major breakthroughs in the last few years: new chemistries that destroy biofilms more reliably and efficiently. For example, Ecolab’s Synergex^TM sanitizer provides an FDA-approved biofilm claim in spray-and-wipe applications.

The reality (for most plants) is that wet sanitization will still be part of the master sanitation schedule. But we’re seeing more plants focusing on removing residual moisture after wet sanitization. One option is using a product like Synergex ^TM in a spray-and-wipe application during production to maintain a dry environment, while continuously mitigating the growth and spread of biofilm.

Simplifying dry sanitization with 2-in-1 wipes

Many of the objections or concerns I hear about moving to dry sanitization center on adding steps or time to sanitization SOPs. It’s true that moving from flood sanitization and other wet methods to dry methods can sometimes add steps or increase the labor intensiveness of sanitization protocols. But spray-and-wipe isn’t the only dry application method.

Plants can now use 2-in-1 wipe products to significantly simplify dry sanitization. In fact, Ecolab’s 2-in-1 sanitizer wipes are quickly becoming some of our most popular products.

The obvious benefit of the 2-in-1 wipe is that an employee can achieve both cleaning and sanitization with one single product. But a big and often overlooked benefit is that the wipes come pre-saturated with a controlled dilution of sanitizer product. That means no more worries about dilution control. And that also minimizes the amount of wet sanitizer product being applied to a surface.

Keeping pathogens out with dry floor treatments

We all know it’s much better to keep microbiological contaminants out of the production environment in the first place. In addition to a captive shoe program, most plants typically use a wet floor treatment in doorways—either an aqueous or foam sanitizer solution.

No sanitizing protocol can fully eliminate all bacteria from footwear. And the trouble is that residual moisture from wet sanitizer applications mean the remaining microorganisms are now more easily tracked around the production environment. That residual moisture also promotes the growth of unwanted microorganisms.

But there are new dry floor treatments available that solve this problem. For example, Ecolab now offers a “pelletized” sanitizer (imagine a fine-grained sand). This dry sanitizer delivers high antimicrobial action on contact, without tracking surviving microbes all around the plant—and without creating a hospitable wet environment for those surviving microbes.

Dry sanitization offers benefits beyond food safety

The operational benefits and business advantages of dry sanitization extend beyond the realm of food safety. For example, the residual moisture from wet sanitization methods not only spreads pathogenic microbes—it also spreads a wide range of soils and microbes around the plant. These soils and microbes can create employee health and safety risks, impact food quality, and can impact the functionality, reliability and longevity of equipment and surfaces within the plant.

Residual moisture itself presents risks, including slip and fall hazards for employees, and can directly damage or accelerate wear on plant equipment and surfaces.

Dry cleaning and sanitization is also more sustainable. More organizations are actively aiming to reduce water usage as part of environmental and sustainability goals, and their cleaning and sanitization programs are typically a major source of water usage. Moving toward dry SOPs can significantly—and rapidly—reduce total water usage in a plant.

Validating with data-driven insights

For most organizations, food safety will be the core driver of the move toward dry cleaning and sanitization. But as food safety and quality leaders know, you can’t just follow the protocol hoping it will be effective. Plants need to rigorously validate and verify out the efficacy of any change to their cleaning and sanitization program.

Historically, this validation process presented a major barrier to change. But as plants mature their environmental monitoring programs, digital tools and platforms can greatly simplify and accelerate data-driven validation. For example, newer technologies can help plants move from manual sample gathering and paper-based documentation to more automated sampling protocols and fully digitized documentation.

This data-driven validation not only ensures compliance and supports audit-readiness, but it also gives plants assurance that all the effort to implement dry methods are actually delivering the efficacy plants need to protect food safety and quality. And these digital platforms are helping plants mature their environmental monitoring, harnessing all that data to get actionable insights on how they can proactively and continuously protect food safety and quality while finding new efficiencies.

If you’re interested in learning more about dry cleaning and sanitization, I highly recommend this helpful video below.