Industrial lubricants for the food industry?

Kluber Lubrication runs very successful maintenance and engineering seminars for the UK food industry, highlighting many contamination issues as well as the understanding of food grade lubricants.

Are industrial lubricants acceptable in the food processing industry? Just as the BSE and salmonella disasters of the 1980s and 1990s exposed the risks of industrial meat and egg production, the Sudan 1 dye scare highlighted just how vulnerable the food chain is.

Hearing such things could start making you feel nervous every time you raise a fork or glass to your mouth.

But just how common is contamination of food? How does the food industry work to keep these unwanted products out of the food chain? Food production facilities are monitored both by the food companies themselves and by outside inspectors.

Inspectors review the company policies and procedures and do site checks to make sure they are operating safely.

Many companies do random testing of their products to make sure their production line has not become contaminated.

Unfortunately, these procedures are not perfect.

Occasionally contaminated products get through.

And the consequences can be very serious.

How the Listeria bacterium got into several kinds of packaged meat in the USA, is not yet fully known.

At present there are no laws governing how food processing machinery is maintained, only guidelines stating they must be kept to a certain level of cleanliness.

However a clean machine is not necessarily a safe machine.

Almost every piece of food processing machinery has a moving part of some type which inevitably requires lubricating in order to function correctly.

Food companies don't deliberately allow contamination.

It's definitely not in their interest to do so.

It can cost huge amounts of money in fines and lost business let alone adverse publicity.

However many food manufacturing companies still allow industrial and incorrect lubricants to be used on food processing machinery usually due to ignorance of the consequences of lubricant contamination.

We can no longer assume that no direct food contact means it's safe to use "industrial".

A safe route is to ensure that only food grade lubricants are used across all production areas.

This policy is now being adopted by many of the blue chip food groups worldwide and with the help of Kluber Lubrication you too can switch to become more compliant, improve traceability, control materials in contact, cut out potential carcinogens, odorous compounds, nut derivates, work to a continuous improvement plan and save energy at the same time.

Kluber Lubrication has recently run a number of very successful Maintenance and Engineering Seminars for the food industry in the UK, highlighting many of the above issues as well as the understanding of food grade lubricants, HACCP based audits, lubricant control and energy efficiency.

These seminars are scheduled to restart in early 2006 at various locations throughout the UK and should anyone wish to attend please contact us as soon as possible in order to reserve a place.

Dates and venues will be advised in due course.

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