The highly regulated food and beverage industry requires a lot of attention and effort to maintain food safety because food contamination and foodborne diseases are the least desirable things that can happen to businesses and their customers.
Companies often end up having food safety issues because of cross-contamination or cross-contact incidents. This blog will explain the terms cross-contamination and cross-contact, their meanings, differences, and ways to prevent these issues.
How Does Cross-Contact Differ From Cross-Contamination?
Initially, the FDA considered cross-contamination and cross-contact interchangeable, but later, the agency started to differentiate the terms. However, they are indeed seem to be quite similar.
Cross-contact refers to the unintentional transfer of allergens from one food product to another, making them unsafe to eat because they can cause allergic reactions. This can happen for different reasons, which we will discuss later.
In contrast, cross-contamination means the transfer of pathogens to food, contaminating it and causing foodborne illnesses. The contaminants are divided into biological hazards, physical hazards, and chemical hazards in food.
Let’s say a food worker cuts chicken or pork and then doesn’t change the cutting board or the utensils and moves on to cutting the vegetables, possibly contaminating them with parasites or salmonella.
Cross-contamination and cross-contact can happen because of food-to-food contact, people-to-food contact, and equipment-to-food contact.
Differentiating Two Forms of Cross-Contact
Cross-contact can be direct and indirect. Let’s see what it means.
Direct cross-contact happens when food with allergens comes into contact with an allergy-free item. For instance, a bakery may have placed gluten-free and regular bread close to each other. Even the smallest amount of gluten can adversely affect people with celiac disease.
In other words, we can call it food-to-food contact, just like in cross-contamination case.
Indirect cross-contact occurs when a third party is involved, such as a person, equipment, utensils, or surface. For example, a food handler didn’t sanitize the surface, utensils, and hands after working with an allergen.
What Are the Types of Cross-Contamination?
Cross-contamination can happen in direct and indirect ways. Let’s see where you must be careful and avoid potential contamination risks.
Food-to-Food
Food-to-food is also called direct cross-contamination, which means that high-risk food (such as raw poultry or pork) touches ready-to-eat foods due to improper storage or handling.
People-to-Food
Contaminants can get into food through hands. That’s why proper hygiene and dress code are essential for workers. That’s also why you must never let an ill employee work with food.
Read our food safety guide for manufacturers to learn more about workplace hygiene and sanitation practices.
Equipment-to-Food
Equipment-to-food is also self-explanatory and means the transfer of pathogens from utensils, cutting boards, or dishes to food.
Environment-to-Food
Pathogens get into food from the environment, including air, water, soil, or surfaces.
As you can see, cross-contact and cross-contamination happen quite similarly, meaning food manufacturers must always control their processes to avoid cross-contamination and cross-contact. A cutting board can contain both allergens or bacteria and viruses.
What Should Businesses Do To Prevent Cross-Contact and Cross-Contamination?
Cross-contamination is the last thing you want to deal with. Moreover, while cross-contaminated products can be saved through cooking, cross-contact is irreversible, and prevention is the best method to deal with both threats.
Here are the tips on how to avoid cross-contact and cross-contamination in food and beverage production.
Sanitation— Companies must establish proper sanitation procedures. Workers must thoroughly clean and sanitize the equipment and surfaces so allergen-containing or contaminated residues don’t reach other food. They should also remember handwashing and other personal hygiene rules.
Training – As a food business owner or manager, you must train food handlers to work with food that can contaminate or be contaminated. They need to understand the importance of cross-contact and cross-contamination prevention and be aware of the strategies to do that.
Allergen Management – Separate potentially pathogenic and allergen-containing products from safe ones and implement proper allergen labeling.
Labelling – Use consistent labeling techniques to differentiate products. You can also do this for equipment and utensils: use color coding to allocate what equipment you can use for different food types.
Workflow and Space Optimization—You can schedule allergen-free food processing before allergen-containing foods, such as meat, seafood, or dairy. You can also dedicate different spaces for high-risk foods.
Allergen Control Plan – Create, review, and regularly update detailed allergen management plans to develop procedures for cross-contact prevention.
Supplier Management: Communicate with suppliers and ensure they provide real-time and valid data about the supplied goods. Double-check whether your suppliers have an allergen control system and adhere to a hazard prevention routine.
Maintaining security and preventive measures will allow food manufacturers to minimize cross-contact risks. This approach will work best in complex environments, so you must contemplate implementing software to automate and centralize the processes.
What Should Food Manufacturers Do if Cross-Contact or Cross-Contamination Has Happened?
If an incident has already occurred, you must act instantly. You must stop the production, separate contaminated batches, and thoroughly investigate.
If your contaminated product has left your facility, you will likely need to announce a recall and warn the consumers. Contaminated products must be withdrawn from the stores and destroyed. Recently, an ice cream sandwich recall was announced because of peanut cross-contamination. Over half of the product was ultimately destroyed, and the recall took just two hours!
To minimize the impact of recalls on your facility and people’s well-being, you must have well-established food traceability and batch management processes and comprehensive recall management.
How Can Food Manufacturers Avoid Cross-Contact and Cross-Contamination Using Food Safety Software?
Preventing food safety incidents like cross-contact and cross-contamination is demanding and requires a complex approach. Everything from food suppliers to food distribution must be controlled, and food safety software will help you.
FoodReady software is a universal tool for efficiently monitoring, controlling, and documenting production processes. You will implement strict and effective allergen management through ingredient tracking, ensuring that allergen-free foods are handled separately from allergen-containing products.
Real-time monitoring informs your employees about potential risks, such as insufficient sanitation and cleaning or invalid supplier information. This will significantly reduce contamination incidents and provide more transparency.
Moreover, FoodReady food safety software will automate cleaning and sanitation processes, guaranteeing properly sanitized equipment between production runs. Maintenance management will also become a breeze with FoodReady.
The software will also help you create digital checklists and manage traceability logs, allowing detailed recordkeeping and preventive measures. FoodReady will facilitate audit preparation and recall management.
Implementing FoodReady software will reduce human error, enhance operational efficiency, and digitize food safety compliance. You will protect your customers and maintain your brand reputation. Contribute to world food safety and eliminate unnecessary hustle while preventing cross-contact and cross-contamination.
Conclusion
Cross-contamination and cross-contact are both quite dangerous for consumer health and can lead to adverse outcomes like food poisoning, severe allergic reactions, hospitalization, or even death. That’s why food companies must have a proactive approach to these issues.
Cross-contact and cross-contamination used to be considered the same. Still, they are different now: while cross-contamination means the transfer of chemical, biological, or physical pathogens to food that may be resolved by thermal processing, cross-contact is the unintentional transfer of allergens to allergen-free foods, and it can’t be reversed.
Preventing these issues is obligatory and requires much effort, but it’s worth it. You must implement and optimize many processes, such as allergen management, labeling, sanitation, document management, etc.
Although it sounds frustrating, food safety software like FoodReady can make it easier. It takes care of the intricate tasks so you can concentrate on the things that require your attention.
Contact us to learn how we can help you prevent undesirable food safety incidents!
FAQs
Cross-contact can lead to the consumption of allergens, which are harmless for people with no allergies but can cause severe reactions for allergic people.
The FDA requires that all sources of allergens are declared on the food labels.
Cross-contamination can cause foodborne illness outbreaks, recalls, reputational losses, and regulatory penalties.
Food manufacturers can find out through tracking customer complaints, product testing, and real-time monitoring.
The FDA demands proper allergen management, allergen labeling, and adherence to GMPs (Good Manufacturing Practices).
