USA
UniFirst Corp.’s Dorchester, Massachusetts laundry has recently qualified to renew its Hygienically Clean Food Safety certification. This accomplishment reflects UniFirst’s commitment to best management practices (BMPs) in laundering as verified by on-site inspection and their capability to produce hygienically clean textiles as quantified by ongoing microbial testing. UniFirst currently has 52 laundries in the USA and three in Canada that hold this certification.
The Hygienically Clean Food Safety certification confirms the laundry’s dedication to compliance and processing garments and linens using BMPs as described in its quality assurance documentation, the focal point for inspectors’ evaluation of critical control points (CCPs) that minimize risk. On-site inspections also evaluate practices relevant to handling and processing textile products used in food manufacturing/processing establishments for adherence to U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) directives. Introduced in 2014, Hygienically Clean Food Safety brought to North America the international cleanliness standards for laundering garments and other textile products for food manufacturing used worldwide by the Certification Association for Professional Textile Services and the European Committee for Standardization.
“More and more, we’re seeing our customers in food-related industries looking for third-party validation that our specialized Product Protection Process and our Hygienically Clean standards are consistent with HACCP and GFSI guidelines,” said Adam Soreff, director of marketing and communications at UniFirst Corp., Wilmington, Massachusetts. “Working with a Hygienically Clean Food Safety certified laundry helps reassure them that their managed uniform program is working in concert with their own food-safety protocols to help them ensure food safety for consumers.”
