Hygiene and Food Safety Management and Compliance

Defines how colour is used to visually distinguish tools, areas, or processes to prevent cross-contamination.

Colour coding is a powerful tool when it comes to effective hygiene and food safety management. This simple visual system will help minimise the risk of microbial, allergen, chemical, and foreign body cross-contamination. Colour coding is not just a natural part of Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) and HACCP plans; it is often a requirement for GFSI-benchmarked food safety standards (including BRCGS, FSSC22000, IFS, and SQF). Explore our resources to implement a clear, simple system that reduces product risk, boosts employee accountability, and aids compliance in your facility.

Maintaining food safety requires operating within a complex global framework of laws, standards, and certifications.

This hub is dedicated to helping you understand and comply with regulatory demands. We break down the hierarchy of key food safety standards, like BRCGS, FSSC 22000, and SQF, in addition to the requirements of local legislation, e.g., FDA or EFSA mandates.

Explore content focused on implementing a food safety system based on HACCP principles and Pre-Requisite Programs (PRPs) to help ensure your operational practices, equipment, and documentation meet the detailed requirements of local legislation, external audits, and business-to-business standards.

Criteria for choosing the appropriate tool based on the task, surface, and hygiene requirements.

The cleaning tools and equipment in your facility will be on your auditor’s radar. The wrong tools (or even the correct tools poorly maintained) can easily result in an audit non-compliance, or worse.

This hub provides the guidance needed to select equipment that solves your cleaning challenges without presenting a risk itself. We discuss how your tools should be:

• Fit-for-purpose: What to consider when choosing the right tool for the job to ensure that the cleaning task is as fast and effective as possible.

• Compliant: How to ensure that the tools and utensils you select are appropriately compliant with local food contact regulations and guidance.

• Hygienically designed: What to look for when choosing equipment of good hygienic design, i.e., easy to clean and durable, to minimise cross-contamination risks and save time on tool sanitation.

• Ergonomically designed: How to minimise the risk of harm to your staff by choosing user-friendly tools.

Instructions on how to correctly use each tool for safe and efficient cleaning.

All tools are most effective when used properly.

This knowledge hub moves beyond tool selection to focus on the operational controls necessary to prevent both cleaning equipment and cleaning actions becoming a major vector for contamination.

We explore best practices to minimise the spread of microbial, chemical, allergenic, and foreign body hazards through the appropriate use of cleaning equipment and utensils.

Learn how to implement clear spatial segregation and site zoning to protect open product and understand the critical role of comprehensive staff training and compliance. The proper use of cleaning tools is a critical line of defence against product contamination, product recalls, and audit failures.

To function optimally throughout their lifecycle, Vikan cleaning tools must be cleaned and maintained properly. Find out how to make the most of your Vikan products.

The correct maintenance of cleaning tools and utensils is essential for compliance and for minimising the critical risks of microbial, chemical, allergen, and foreign body cross-contamination in your facility.

This hub guides you through establishing a comprehensive, audit-ready tool maintenance program, going beyond simple cleaning to cover all aspects of maintenance that are required by HACCP prerequisite programs and GFSI schemes like BRCGS and FSSC 22000.

Learn how to develop validated decontamination methods and how to implement robust protocols for tool cleaning verification, inspection and replacement. We also discuss how to optimise safe, hygienic storage of your equipment to ensure they remain a proactive defence, rather than a contamination risk.

Proper storage of cleaning equipment is a critical focus area within the food industry and for good reason. Food safety standards require cleaning tools to be cleaned and stored in a hygienic manner, and failure to do so can lead to non-conformances during audits.

Wall brackets, shadow boards, and mobile solutions such as the HyGo Mobile Cleaning Station play a key role in establishing an effective and hygienic tool management system. When cleaning tools are stored correctly, ideally using colour-coded systems, they are easy to locate, always available when needed, and returned to the correct place. This helps improve workflow efficiency and can significantly reduce labour costs.

Effective storage solutions also prevent tools from being placed on the floor, where they are more likely to become contaminated, damaged, or create trip hazards.

Moving beyond individual tool selection, use, and maintenance, this hub focuses on the overall management system required to ensure audit compliance and continuous control over your cleaning stock. Effective management turns cleaning equipment from a potential risk into a reliable asset.

We explore critical system controls, including essential document control related to:

• food contact compliance and cleanability

• dedicated hygienic storage, including stock room organisation

• the use of fixed shadow boards and mobile tool storage and transport systems

• proper inventory and stock management to ensure the right tools are available at the right time

Learn how robust tool management practices improve operational efficiency, support your colour-coding plan, and provide auditors with clear evidence of due diligence.

The 5S methodology (Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardise, and Sustain) is a cornerstone of lean manufacturing that dramatically improves food safety and operational efficiency.

This hub demonstrates how to apply this proven system to your hygiene program, ensuring every cleaning tool is in the right place at the right time.

By implementing structured organisation and discipline, you directly reduce the risk of foreign bodies and cross-contamination. Learn how Vikan's colour-coded solutions, hygienic storage options, and visual controls align with 5S principles, helping you standardise procedures, maintain audit readiness, and cultivate a culture of continuous hygienic improvement.

Hygienic design principles ensure that equipment can be effectively and efficiently cleaned, thus minimising the potential for cross-contamination. This hub is dedicated to the engineering and materials of construction standards —developed by bodies like EHEDG and 3-A—that ensure equipment and surfaces are inherently easy to decontaminate and maintain.

You will learn:

• How to identify and avoid contamination harborage points

• Why surface texture matters

• What materials are and aren’t suitable for food contact

• How to spot a hygienically designed tool

• How hygienically designed tools can make your cleaning regimen more effective and more efficient.

Mastering these design fundamentals is essential for sustained compliance and offers a significant reduction in the risks from microbial, chemical, allergen, and foreign body hazards.

Don’t navigate compliance alone. This hub is your direct connection to Vikan’s team of dedicated specialists, including published scientific researchers and active members of international hygiene and food safety organisations. We offer proactive risk mitigation by providing hands-on support like detailed site surveys, digital tools such as our Zone Planner, bespoke training, and interactive workshops, all aimed at delivering you the validated plans and documentation necessary to optimise your facility's food safety and hygiene.

In many food production environments, wet cleaning is a foundational step in removing contamination from food contact surfaces and the surrounding environment. However, if executed incorrectly, it can instead become an efficient method of spreading hazards and increasing the risk from them through splashing, aerosolisation, and moisture retention (leading to microbial growth).

This hub details appropriate methodologies for wet and controlled moisture cleaning, from sanitation chemical selection to the use of appropriate tools and methods to maximise cleaning, optimise disinfection, and minimise the potential for cross-contamination, all based on TACT principles.

While wet cleaning is essential for some cleaning tasks, dry cleaning is the critical methodology for environments where moisture must be strictly controlled. Its applied use can also offer many benefits in wet production environments, including reducing the risk of contamination spread and growth, and reducing the use of water and chemicals.

This hub provides essential guidance on techniques to remove debris without adding moisture to the environment. We focus on methods that minimise the airborne spread of contaminants and the risk of allergen cross-contact, including the proper selection, use and maintenance of specialised brushes, cloths, scrapers, and vacuums.

Microfibre textiles offer exceptional surface contact and contamination removal and retention capabilities. They are a highly effective way to achieve superior cleaning and hygiene, with options for wet, dry, and controlled moisture cleaning. However, their effectiveness relies entirely on their proper use and management.

This hub focuses on the full lifecycle of microfibre, including validated cleaning and disinfection protocols, to ensure efficacy and prevent them becoming a source and vector of contamination. It also covers the critical need for training on microfibre use and management. We also examine the selection of microfibre textiles, their long-term cost effectiveness, and other impacts of their use related to material quality, as not all microfibre is created equal.