Current: North America 
Regional Websites: South Africa 
United Kingdom 
Current: North America Regional Websites: South Africa United Kingdom
Breakthrough Norovirus-effective Formulation Now Commercially Available
The use of Food Code compliant alcohol hand sanitizers in Foodservice has been suppressed for years by relatively low effectiveness on their number one cause of foodborne outbreaks, norovirus. Formulations deploying new synergists potentiate the alcohol base and more than triple its predesessor products' effectiveness. It is more than 10 times more effective than the thin liquid versions. The foodservice market now has a very effective and convenient option which is also skin friendly.
The scientists at GOJO® in collaboration with Dr. Moe at Emory University and Dr. Lee-Ann Jaykus at North Carolina State found ways to improve laboratory testing with this lab-unfriendly "non-enveloped" virus and develop formulations that work.
This first generation product was known commercially as Purell® VF447. It is Food Code compliant and formulated on a base of 70% ethyl alcohol. That version was recently replaced with VF481, known by some as Purell Ultra. It too is Food Code Compliant. Those operators most devastated by norovirus outbreaks, including cruise lines, are among the early adopters.
Actually it can be thanks to the diligence of operators, regulators and food service workers. Unfortunately, even with the best intentions not all food service is safe. The Five Faces of Foodborne Illness is based on USA statistics provided by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) who also advise us that Handwashing is the single most important means of preventing the spread of infection. read more »
Measuring progress for hand hygiene, the most frequently cited contributing factor in foodborne outbreaks, is an existential priority for Handwashing For Life. Our Executive Director, Jim Mann, will be covering the event to advance the measurement factor as a key to enhancing voluntary compliance.
We are celebrating SNHD's winning of an NSF Leadership Award. They were nominated by Katherine Jacobi, president and CEO of the Nevada Restaurant Association, who will be attending. The two examples of SNHD leadership were the Health Card/Vaccine System for Hep A and the baseline field research of SaniTwice done at the Venetian in Las Vegas. read more »
Poor hand hygiene is likely the single largest contributing factor to diarrhea in North America. If we want to talk about waste, let's start with diarrhea's dire damper on productivity and resource losses starting with water and toilet paper. One missed handwash can ignite a chain of illness throughout the workplace, schools, guests, patients and family.
We do know that norovirus is by far the dominant pathogen causing foodborne outbreaks, like those endured by cruise ships, schools and nursing homes. Its primary path of destruction is confirmed by the CDC to be fecal-hand-oral. We are feasting on invisible germs, in this case, virus, picked up from others via casual contact with an ill person. This contact may be via food prepared by an ill worker. The source is often a person who shows no symptoms or from a surface which shows no symptoms - it's clean to the FDA accepted standard of "clean to sight and touch". Norovirus can live for days or even weeks and remains invisible and free of odor for the whole time. (See Dr. Christine Moe's work at Emory University.)
Here are our Earth Day recommendations focused on our daily lives away from home: read more »
When clean to sight and touch is not enough.Every surface touch in a professional kitchen, restroom and service area is different and carries an unknown risk factor for contaminating the hands, bare or gloved. These hands in turn can contaminate the food or another person directly. Grouping these touches, with the HACCP principle in mind, is a good first step - prioritizing those touches that must trigger a handwash and a specific hand hygiene regimen.
Handwash training has long been a priority for foodservice operators and their regulators. Training monies are invested annually even when facing high staff turnover rates, often over 100% per year.
Approximately 23% of the soap from open refillable (bulk soap) dispensers in public restrooms is highly contaminated with bacteria. A recent study confirms that bulk soap dispensers in schools are similarly tainted!
The findings of a study of bulk soap dispensers in a school were recently presented at a meeting of the National Association of School Nurses (NASN) held in Boston. Among other things, the study found that washing with soap from bulk dispensers left ten times as many bacteria on students’ hands as was found on hands washed with soap from sealed refills. The research also suggests that contaminated bulk soap may play a role in the transmission of bacteria in schools, particularly among children.
Bulk dispensers are refilled by pouring soap from a large container into an open reservoir. Typically the nozzle that dispenses the soap is not replaced. In contrast, sealed dispensing systems utilize sealed bags or cartridges that contain soap, along with a new nozzle.
Soap in bulk dispensers is prone to contamination because the soap is constantly exposed to bacteria from the environment, such as from the hands and body of the person refilling the soap, the spray of toilet water after flushing, or even from dust in the air.
In previous studies, soap from more than 500 dispensers across the United States was tested to evaluate the prevalence of contaminated soap in public restrooms.1 “We were surprised to learn that the soap from one in four bulk dispensers are contaminated with an average of more than three million bacteria, many of which are known to be opportunistic pathogens,” said Carrie Zapka, microbiology scientist, GOJO Industries. She continued, “Exposure to such high levels of these organisms can be a significant health risk to individuals with compromised immune systems – estimated to be at least 20% of the population.2 In contrast, soap from sealed dispensing systems was free from contamination.” read more »
These three recent quotes from an operator, an industry leading food safety auditor and a passionate advocate serve as a SaniTwice update following presentations at recent meetings:
"As foodservice moves closer to the action and further from the kitchen, SaniTwice is the answer." Food & Beverage Manager
"Regulators must change their paradigm that water is available if there is a plumbing fixture somewhere in the building." Food safety auditor and former state health department executive.
"Log two pathogen reduction is easily achieved in many different combinations of chemical action, pyhsical action (friction), time and temperature." Jim Mann, Chemist & Executive Director, Handwashing For Life.
SaniTwice is now being used or considered for use at catered events, outdoor events, petting zoos, schools (during water outages), gourmet food trucks, airlines, bars, first responder situations in healthcare, cruise lines and airlines.
SaniTwice is the hand cleansing protocol for use where water is not readily available or in too small a quantity to yield a good handwash, log 2 pathogen reduction. Two rounds of research at BioScience Laboratories in 2008/9 demonstrated positive results in light to moderate soil situations (beef broth).
Three Times a Charm
A third evaluation was conducted following discussions with regulatory representatives. Their advice was to check performance on heavy soil (ground beef), providing an even greater margin of safety for this new intervention. This has now been completed and the results are reported in the following bar graphs.
This research study is yet another in a growing body of scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of the Sani-Twice approach which has been submitted for journal publication. Field tests started in the desert of the Mid-East, solving a military foodservice issue, and were followed by a successful two-year study in another desert, Las Vegas, under the guidance of the Southern Nevada Health District (SNHD).
SaniTwice solved another issue for local schools in Las Vegas by providing an alternative hand cleansing method for use during water outages.
Feedback please. Comments are requested in order to verify and modify for future iterations Thank you!
The ServeReady Regimen Selector gives operators a comparative risk-based look at a range of hand hygiene interventions to better align with the operation's customer base, menu, staff (span of control), facility and management's tolerance for risk. Supporting research is outlined below.
On the vertical axis is the log reduction scale and each bar represents the effectiveness of a specific intervention. A log 1 represents 90% removal or kill while log 5 is 99.999%.
This hand hygiene menu facilitates an integrated look across the entire operation to match the risk with the right intervention.
read more »
Ethnic considerations along with language proficiency must be factored into foodservice hand hygiene training programs. All food handling staff must be aware that “Failure in hand hygiene systems is the number one contributing factor in foodservice outbreaks.” according to Jim Mann, executive director of the Handwashing For Life Institute. Dr. D. Pettit of the World Health Organization (WHO) reflects a supporting view in his healthcare work where he considers hand hygiene as the most effective tool in preventing cross-contamination and lowering HAI, hospital acquired infections.
Within the foodservice industry, public health officials, lead by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, agree that regular handwashing is the most effective defense against the spread of foodborne illness. It is the responsibility of foodservice management to offer effective hand hygiene facilities complete with best practice protocols, products and training in order to keep their customers and workforce safe
Handwashing training involves not only education, but also behavior modification and constant reinforcement. Training is challenging even with a receptive group of trainees, however, adding the extra obstacle of differing cultural and religious attitudes into the mix, makes influencing attitudes and changing behaviors an even tougher task.
According to a 2008 study conducted by the WHO, hand hygiene is strongly influenced by religious faith and potentially affects compliance. Although this and other published studies focused on healthcare settings, one can assume that religion and culture influences hand hygiene in the foodservice sector in a similar fashion. With a growing influx of immigrants from India, Pakistan and the Middle East, Muslim religious and cultural traditions must be taken into consideration when formulating best practices in hand hygiene within the foodservice industry.
Islam places great emphasis on physical and spiritual cleanliness. The Qu’ran offers specific instruction on when and how hand cleansing should occur. These include before prayer (5 times a day), before and after meals, after using the toilet, after touching a dog, shoes or cadaver, and after handling anything soiled. Compared to most other religions, these rules are quite specific and stringent. More importantly, these rules are followed by the majority of Muslims, not just those who consider themselves ardent followers or overtly religious. One reason for such compliance is that hand hygiene patterns are usually established within the first 10 years of life and become ingrained behavior. With such specific instructions from the Qu’ran and a high rate of compliance, one would assume hand cleanliness among Muslim workers within the healthcare and foodservice setting would not be an issue. However, although Islam teaches its followers that cleanliness is vitally important, other Muslim practices may increase the risk of cross contamination and illness transmission.
A common popular belief in the Muslim (and Hindu, Jewish and African) culture is that the left hand is considered unclean as it is used for hygienic cleaning, while the right hand is used for eating. Although toilet paper is widely accepted and used, culture dictates that Muslims should clean their private parts after bathroom use with their bare left hand. This practice is obviously problematic, as even vigorous post-bathroom hand washing often doesn’t remove all potentially illness-causing pathogens. Additionally, many Muslims don’t like to use utensils to eat and prefer to use their bare hands. Again, although the Qu’ran instructs individuals to wash before and after eating, it is almost impossible to wash away all risk. Perhaps the greatest obstacle foodservice and healthcare management may face when trying to ensure compliance with hand hygiene standards within the Muslim workforce, is their reluctance, and often refusal, to use the gold standard in convenient hand disinfection - alcohol based hand sanitizers.
Alcohol hand sanitizers are considered an adjunct to handwashing and are increasingly used in both foodservice and healthcare to maintain hand cleanliness standards between wash cycles. Using hand sanitizer without a preceding handwash, preferably with a nailbrush, is totally unacceptable after defecation or any use of the restroom.
Although the Qu’ran specifically forbids the use of alcohol, it permits the use of any manmade substance to reduce illness or contribute to improved health, including alcohol used for disinfection. In fact, the Muslim Judicial Council of South Africa has issued written permission regarding the use of alcohol not produced as a result of fermentation for the specific purpose of disinfecting the hands. In addition, due various health concerns during Hajj (religious pilgrimages to Mecca and Medina), in 2002 the World Muslim League in Mecca issued a fatwa allowing the use of alcohol based hand sanitizers. During this year’s Hajj, Saudi Deputy Health Minister Dr. Ziad Memish reiterated that Saudi senior religious leaders deem alcohol-based sanitizers acceptable. Despite these fatwas and their documented approval of alcohol based hand sanitizers, many Muslims still adhere to their conservative beliefs that all alcohol is unacceptable. Not only is the smell of alcohol on the skin disturbing, some fear that the alcohol in the sanitizers may be inhaled or absorbed into the skin causing intoxication. read more »
Everclean brings peace of mind to clients through our proven food safety and sanitation program. We provide customers with a full
spectrum of services that ensures compliance with the local health department.
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The H1N1 Rap was written, composed, produced, and performed by John D. Clarke, MD, FAAFP. This music video is a fun, highly educational, and entertaining way to learn about prevention of the H1N1 virus. read more »
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