Monthly Archives: September 2023

What's different about food processing Footwear?

The intense focus on hygiene within the food industry necessitates specialized footwear. The conditions in which employees work and the prolonged periods they spend on their feet dictate the need for high-quality boots.

Selecting the appropriate footwear offers numerous benefits, such as increased employee satisfaction, reduced slip-related injuries and complaints, enhanced productivity, and minimized hygiene-related risks.

In food processing, the primary types of footwear are gumboots and leather shoes. The attributes that make these shoes suitable for the food industry include:

Leather Footwear Considerations:

Elastic vs. laced designs play a crucial role. Some facilities prohibit shoelaces due to the contamination risk they pose, especially when walkways or platforms exist above production lines.

Where do I start with colour coding? 

What are the non-negotiable contamination risks you need to prevent? It’s these areas that are ideal to begin managing using colour. There’s no right or wrong way to do this, and colour coding is fully customisable to your needs.    

Outlined below are some of the common colour coding practices used within the industry. If you are interested in how and why it works, click through to this blog where we outline some tips on implementing it.  

Allergen management: 
Allergen contamination is a universal concern within the food processing industry, as the consequence of this occurring is

Blue is associated as the food industry colour, as it contrasts the majority of ingredients.  

This, of course allows visual detection in the unlikely case of it falling into production. However, the use of coloured PPE has increased within the industry to manage contamination and hygiene risks, with no change to PPE quality or cost. 
 
So, why not just use blue?  
 
Reputational damage from a cross-contamination event is just not an option, not to mention the cost of this on your business. While blue allows for easier foreign object traceability, it doesn’t safe-guard from the possibility of mis-handling product, for example allergens. 
This is where colour coded PPE comes in.