Cleaning Small-Scale Dairy Plants: Cleaning Drains

- [Instructor] Keeping drains clean is a critical component of producing safe dairy foods.

Soil and bacteria can build up in drains, leading to the potential for products to become contaminated with pathogens, the microorganisms that make people sick.

Listeria monocytogenes is a pathogen that has severe health consequences, and can be found in dairy processing environments, particularly in drains.

Ideally, drains should be cleaned on each processing day, and this is often the case in large scale facilities.

Small scale facility should have a regular cleaning schedule for drains.

The more frequently, the better.

Today, Eva will show you how to clean the drain near the vat after making cheese.

Cleaning drains are done manually with a cleaning solution, proper brushes, and a hose.

The first step of cleaning is to put on appropriate personal protective equipment, or PPE.

Eva is wearing chemical and slip resistant boots, a chemical resistant apron, safety glasses, and chemical resistant gloves.

Next, Eva gathers cleaning supplies.

To prevent cross-contamination, the use of color-coded buckets and brushes is a good practice.

Black is used exclusively for drains.

This black drain brush has a red colored area to indicate that it is used to clean drains in a raw milk area.

And the handle is printed with the words use for floor drains only.

Eva has prepared a bucket of cleaning solution made to the proper concentration according to her sanitation standard operating procedure, or SSOP for cleaning drains.

She uses a black bucket to indicate that the cleaning solution is to be used only for drains.

Her brush has a yellow band, or maybe all black to indicate that the brush is used in an area for processing pasteurized products.

There are different styles of drains used in dairy processing, and this is a basket style drain.

This drain has a perforated cover, and others have grates.

If your drain has a grate, be sure to carefully scrub each section, so that the soil and bacteria do not build up on the inside corners.

Eva removes the basket, and washes it carefully with a short black hand brush.

Eva uses sufficient scrubbing action, or mechanical force to clean the residue from both sides of the basket.

She is careful not to cause any splattering during cleaning, because this could spread contamination throughout the facility.

Next, Eva uses the long handled drain brush to scrub the drain.

She carefully dips the brush into the bucket of cleaning solution.

She scrubs the drain with sufficient action to clean the residue from the edges and sides of the drain, reaching deep inside with the brush.

Again, she takes care to not cause spattering during scrubbing, or when removing the brush from the drain.

Eva pours the bucket of cleaning solution gently down the drain as the first rinse.

She can then fill up the bucket with clean water for additional rinses.

She can also use the hose carefully to rinse the drain.

Here, you can see that she is spraying the floor around the drains so that the water flows first on the floor and then down the drain.

Using a high pressure hose directly into the drain for rinsing is a very bad idea.

This causes water to splatter, and spray out of the drain, and can cause small droplets of contaminated water to spread around the processing facility, potentially causing food safety issues.

Now that Eva has cleaned and rinsed the basket and drain, she puts the basket back into the drain, and she is done cleaning.

The last thing Eva does is document that she cleaned the drain to make sure her food safety records are complete.

Now she can take pride in a job well done to keep her facility as clean as possible to make high-quality safe dairy foods.