February is Best Sanitizers' Hand Hygiene Awareness Month
We want to provide food industry professionals with the tools and education they need to reduce cross-contamination from hands.
NEVADA CITY, Calif. (PRWEB) January 31, 2019
Best Sanitizers, Inc. is celebrating their 1st Semi-Annual Hand Hygiene Awareness Campaign this February. CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) estimates that each year roughly 1 in 6 Americans (or 48 million people) get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die of foodborne illnesses. Hand washing can make a difference in cross-contamination from food production workers. Contaminated hands can transfer pathogens to surfaces, utensils, ingredients, and finished food products.
To increase Hand Hygiene Awareness, Best Sanitizers is offering food manufacturers free hand hygiene training, guidance and support through onsite training or through web-based presentations. Interested companies in the food manufacturing industry can learn more and schedule their training by calling Best Sanitizers at 888.225.3267.
Food manufacturers require their production employees to wash their hands repeatedly throughout the day: before starting a shift, after using the restroom, after lunch, after breaks, and after touching anything that might carry pathogens. Best Sanitizers follows these Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines for proper hand washing technique: Thoroughly wet hands with clean, running water, apply an adequate amount of soap, rub palms and back of hands, rub thumbs and interlace fingers, rub fingertips into palm of opposite hand, rub wrists, rinse well with running water, dry hands thoroughly with a disposable paper towel.
Best Sanitizers recommends using a quality hand soap like Alpet® Q E2 Sanitizing Foam Soap or Alpet® E1 Fragrance-Free Foam Soap to reduce pathogens. Alpet Q E2 Sanitizing Foam Soap is pH balanced and formulated with emollients to help keep employees’ hands soft and healthy, even with repeated use. Alpet E1 is a fragrance-free, foaming hand soap that meets Safer Choice Standards, meaning the product’s formula contains ingredients with more positive human health and environmental characteristics than conventional products of the same type.
The goal of hand hygiene is to reduce the number of pathogens on the hands to the smallest number possible. Hand sanitizing after washing will further reduce the colony forming units (CFUs) on the hands, making it more difficult for germs to transfer on to surfaces, utensils, ingredients, and finished food products from contaminated hands. For maximum pathogen reduction, Best Sanitizers recommends using an effective hand sanitizer, such as Alpet® E3 Plus Hand Sanitizer Spray. This additional layer of pathogen reduction can greatly reduce the risk of cross-contamination. Its 71% Ethanol formula is 99.9999% effective in killing 26 tested pathogens in 15 seconds, which is one of the highest LOG reductions in the industry. Alpet E3 Plus is formulated with emollients to keep hands soft and healthy, even with repeated use. As a spray, it goes on light and leaves hands feeling silky, not heavy and sticky.
Best Sanitizers encourages food processors and food handlers to look at their own hand hygiene programs for any areas that can be improved. The new Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) ruling includes, “continuous improvement” as an element food processors must incorporate into their food safety plans and adding sanitizing soap and hand sanitizer is a good way to meet this requirement. “Our goal is to promote and advance food safety throughout the industry,” states Ryan Witt, Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “We want to provide food industry professionals with the tools and education they need to reduce cross-contamination from hands.”
Best Sanitizers, Inc. offers on-site hand hygiene trainings, demonstrations, and educational webinars for your facility, including food processing plants, nutraceutical facilities, and pharmaceutical processors. With a full line of quality Alpet® hand soaps and hand sanitizers, Best Sanitizers can help food manufacturers choose the right products and maximize hand hygiene efforts with training and support designed specifically to meet their plant’s needs. Schedule an on-site training by calling 888.225.3267.
For more information on Best Sanitizers products, please visit http://www.bestsanitizers.com.
About Best Sanitizers, Inc:
Since 1995, Best Sanitizers, Inc. has been providing the Food Processing, Janitorial Sanitation and Healthcare industries with the highest quality hand soaps, hand sanitizers, surface sanitizers and dispensing options available. These products are used in over 9,000 U.S. food processing facilities. Best Sanitizers was the first company to achieve an E3 rating for an alcohol-based hand sanitizer, and the first to achieve a D2 rating for an alcohol/quat-based surface sanitizer for food contact surfaces. Best Sanitizers continues to explore new and innovative ways to deliver hand hygiene and surface sanitation solutions.