Tag Archives: protective

June 7, 2023

Building An Integrated Pest Management Plan – Part 3

By Phil Gibson

This is the third in a series of articles designed to introduce an integrated pest management framework for cannabis cultivation facilities. To see Part One, click here. For Part Two, click here. Part Four comes out next week and covers direct control options for pest reduction. More to come!

This is Part 3: Preventive Measures

Preventive measures are a great investment in the profitability of your operations. Our objective is to ensure successful repeat harvests forever. Build your procedures with this in mind. This means maintenance and regular review. We all realize that this work can be monotonous drudgery (we know!), but these procedures will ensure your success.

Figure 1: New Air Shower Access Installation

As a summary to begin, pest access must be limited wherever possible. Employees are the first place to start, but we must also return to our site map and review our facility design and workflows. Every operation has to move plants from nursery through harvest and post-harvest. Where should cleaning happen? Of course, you have to clean up post-harvest but when should this occur during the grow cycle? What is the best way to monitor and clean environmental management systems (i.e. air, water) and what are the weaknesses in the physical barriers between operations? Let’s walk through these issues one-by-one.

Employee Access and Sterile Equipment

Follow procedures to screen and protect your employees both to eliminate pests and to avoid exposing your employees to harmful chemicals or storage areas. Look for ways to isolate your workflow from pest access. Be certain that your facility is airtight and sealed with filtration of molds, spores and live organisms in your air intake areas. Air showers at your access points are important to screen your employees on their way into your gowning areas and grow facility. Clothing should be standardized and shoe coverings or crocs should be provided for all employees that access your interior. Look for ways to stop all pests (embedded, crawling, hopping or flying) in all of your room assignments (mothers, clone, veg, flower, trim and drying). This can be improved with shoe baths, sticky mats, frequent hygiene (hand washing and cleaning stations) and procedures for entry.

Always consider requiring hair & beard nets, shoe covers and disposable gloves in plant sensitive areas.

Chemical Access & Protective Equipment

Figure 2: Example Facility Map – Understand Workflow & Barriers to Pest Access

Personal protection equipment (PPE) is very important to protect any employee that will come in contact with materials, liquids or vapors for chemical resources. Establish procedures for chemical use and train employees in the safe handling of these materials. Typical equipment includes high density chemical protective gloves, boots, respirators, Tyvek (or equivalent protective wear) suits and eye protection or goggles.

Chemical access areas and their use should be restricted to employees familiar with their authorized application. Always remember that cannabis is an accumulator plant, and it will absorb and hold onto chemical treatments. Appropriate isolation and safety procedures must be followed for chemical use. Not following these restrictions can expose your employees to dangerous chemicals or get your entire harvests rejected at testing.

Facility Map & Workflow

Because insects would like to be everywhere and they come in many types (root zone, crawling, flying, microscopic, bacterial or biofilm), the facility workflow must understand where they are and how they might migrate if they penetrate your defenses. Note airflows in your rooms and fan locations so migrations can be predicted once an infestation is located. Where are your opportunities for full clean-up and disaster recovery in your building? Where should you stage maintenance filters, test kits, water and cleaning materials. How best to clean up and dispose of sealed garbage containers or cleaning materials?

Operational Cleaning & Post-Harvest Reset

When compiling your preventative measure documents, it is critical to create a repeatable operating procedure for cleaning and sanitizing your rooms, systems, and growing spaces after each harvest. Plant material handling, cleaning surfaces and wipe methods should all be documented in your Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). Define what “clean” is. Removing plants and plant debris is pretty clear but define how to drain reservoirs, clean pipes, change filters and clean and sterilize your rooms. Operators must be trained in these SOPs and reminded of their content on a regular schedule. This is how you avoid outbreaks that can crush your profits.

Physical Barriers & Maintenance

Document your sealed spaces and define your normal room and access door barrier interfaces. Review the status of any known cracks or gaps in your perimeter. Are there any known leaks or piping that has been seen as a risk or a problem in the past? Are there any discoloring or resident mold locations (Never happens, right?). Baseline how much time and people resource a harvest operation and cleaning effort should take. Will you do this after every harvest or compromise your risk by delaying to every third or fourth harvest? Create your barrier SOP.

Environmental Control & HVAC

Managing the air quality provided to your plants is critical to your yields. Controlling CO2, air movement rates (the leaf happy dance), humidity, air filtration and sterilization methods must be maintained and cleaned on a regular basis. Do you need to change the HEPA or other particulate filters? Is there any UV light sterilization maintenance? We have all seen the home HVAC air conduit cleaning commercials. Your commercial facility is no different. How will you clean your air and water plumbing systems? How often will you perform this full reset? When will you calibrate and data log your sensors for temperature, humidity, CO2 and water resources? Put everything about your environmental set points into your maintenance document and decide when to validate these. Molds, mildews and biofilm hazards are all waiting for unmonitored systems to open the door for access.

In Conclusion, This Week

If you’re an IPM nerd and this dynamic topic did not put you to sleep, you can read more detail and examples for your integrated pest management procedures in ourcomplete white paper for Integrated Pest Management Recommendations, download the document here.

In our next chapter, Direct Control Options, we will review what you can use to protect or recover control of your facility including both chemical and non-chemical tools and methods. In our final two chapters, we will discuss extermination of the determined pests that breach your defenses. And with great expectations, our final chapter will discuss emergency response and time to go to war!

Part Four comes out next week. See you again soon!

July 14, 2020

What Cannabis Businesses Need to Do to Adapt to COVID-19

By Arthur Gulumian

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How COVID-19 Impacted Cannabis Businesses

Before jumping into what cannabis businesses can do amid this pandemic, it is crucial to explore the specifics behind how the virus impacted the industry as a whole. From a surface level, it seems obvious what happened: dispensaries had to implement social distancing protocols, require both customers and employees to wear masks and limited the number of customers that can be present on the point-of-sale floor room. But COVID-19 did not merely make shopping experiences a tab bit inconvenient.

Cannabis producers, and especially those involved in manufacturing cannabis goods, experienced an apparent disruption in their production schedules. If the metals and plastics were sourced from Wuhan, Shenzhen or any other dense industrial area in China, supplies suddenly stopped coming, and producers were left with limited production options. Businesses did not consider the value of having various vendors and instead put all their stock in one source. A disruption in production inherently impacts dispensaries.

COVID-19 impacted more than just supply chains, however. For instance, investors are now less likely than before the pandemic to invest in early-stage cannabis companies. Competition for capital now far outweighs the supply for cannabis companies, and we have seen (and will continue to see) a drop in company valuations. Indeed, COVID-19 is affecting more than just currently existing operators but those yet struggling to create cannabis businesses of their own.

Vendors & Supplies

A broad survey conducted by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) between February 22, 2020 and March 5, 2020 found that 75% of U.S. companies had experienced supply chain disruption as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. An estimated 90-95% of all components utilized in cannabis vaporizer pens were sourced from manufacturers in Shenzhen, China. In contrast, very few companies used domestic manufacturers. While this is just one example, it is equally important to note that cannabis-specific equipment and supply shortages were not the only factors that disrupted cannabis businesses. Shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) presented challenges for cannabis dispensaries, producers and manufacturers that continued to operate during the “shelter in place” orders.

Operators must establish a resilient supply chain. Do not simply limit your options to one specific region, as this can be a costly mistake. Operators must cultivate an in-depth understanding of their supply chain beyond critical suppliers and their stress points; they need to develop and follow a systematic supply process that takes potential disruptions and stress points into account. When vetting potential vendors, always ask detailed questions that elicit evidence-backed responses. Ask vendors where they source their materials from, whether they have any history of experiencing disruptions in their supply chain and what kind of setbacks they have suffered as a result of COVID-19.

Investing in Your Core Business

In light of COVID-19, operators must invest in solutions that increase efficiency and improve the customer’s experience. This entails ensuring your customer safely enters and leaves your dispensary with a product they are satisfied with—the essence of any retail operation. Your operation should focus on enhancing customer flow as opposed to encouraging aimless roaming. Having an open-space, Apple store style dispensaries might have been a popular option before, but times have changed, and dispensaries must adapt.

Guided purchases offer not just more efficient transactions, but also serve to ensure that your waiting room isn’t backed up with an endless stream of unmanageable customers. Depending on your locally-mandated COVID-19 protocols, your dispensary will likely not be permitted to hold a high number of customers in the store, nor should it during this pandemic. Each customer service representative must be active as opposed to passive, directly asking customers what they are interested in, offering product or strain choices when customers seem unsure and answering questions as thoroughly as possible to avoid confusion and inherently delays. Be sure to emphasize the value of guided purchases to your employees and how they can promote the safety of both themselves and their customers.

Maintaining Urgency

The uncertainty of COVID-19 and its impact on the general economy has left many individuals “clocked out.” Simply put, many people feel that they should wait until things go back to normal before making any critical decisions. As essential businesses, cannabis operators cannot afford to make this same mistake. Now is not the time to sit back, reflect and wait for the vaccine. Instead, operators must work to precisely assess how COVID-19 impacted their business and execute a clear plan of action to address foreseeable problems.

Execution is far more important than perfection; you’ll need to make changes on a dime and avoid spending excessive hours obsessing over debating specific actions rather than taking them. It is far more essential to get tasks done versus ensuring they are perfect. If something is not working in your business, it must be readdressed or removed entirely from the protocol. It is far better to make necessary changes now amid the pandemic as opposed to reactively waiting and seeing what may come next following it.

Stay nimble by cutting out any factors that may be slowing down your company’s efficiency. Is your point-of-sale system causing issues? Can you use a better payment processing tool? Are any employees underperforming? Are there any internal policies that may be hindering your employees’ ability to work as optimally as possible? These are some of the many factors that must be considered to ensure your business stays agile and adaptable. Determine what is working against you and execute a plan of action to address. Do not wait and do not take shortcuts around regulations.

Understanding the Shift in Purchasing Behavior

Regardless of whether or not a vaccine for COVID-19 is completed anytime soon, operators must know that there is no “returning to normal.” People’s habits and behaviors have changed due to this virus, whereas slow browsing of items might have been preferable for some individuals before COVID-19; this is likely not the case today. Furthermore, research groups like Accenture have found that most customers expect their shopping habits to change permanently.

Source: Accenture COVID-19 Consumer Research, conducted April 2–6. Proportion of consumers that agree or significantly agree.

In the study mentioned above, shopping more consciously is one of the two top priorities for customers during this pandemic. According to Accenture, “[c]onsumers are more mindful of what they’re buying. They are striving to limit food waste, shop more cost consciously and buy more sustainable options. Brands will need to make this a key part of their offer (e.g., by exploring new business models).” Furthermore, customers are now more likely to shop locally; this is why community engagement would be especially important to ensure you develop transparency and trust between your brand and your customers. Understanding this shift in purchasing behavior will remain one of the more crucial tasks of any cannabis operator.

Expanding Sales Avenues

More and more customers are now relying on online and curbside purchases than ever before. Dispensaries must look to their current sales avenues and determine where key focuses should be made. Use your sales data to determine where customers are making their purchases the most, be it through third-party delivery services such as Eaze, standard home delivery, online ordering or curbside pickup. Focus on identifying friction and streamlining the user experience on all customer-facing platforms and services. Equally, consider which platform your customers are using the most to make purchases; are they making more online purchases, or do most still prefer direct shopping at the store? Remember that having more products doesn’t necessarily mean more revenue. You must also identify which products are performing well and which have low margins.

These considerations can help strengthen your highest performing platform while working to fix any more inferior performing platforms. As stated before, stay nimble; if something is not working out, cut it out from your business model, and move forward. Do not be afraid to cut poor-performing platforms to hone your focus on the successful ones. Since post-COVID-19 shopping behavior is likely to stay permanent, these changes may still be applicable following a slowdown or cessation of the virus.

Delighting Your Customers

Virus or not, customer satisfaction remains one of the most crucially defining points for the future of your business. Your customers must be safe and must be happy with their purchase. To ensure this outcome, you need to maintain adequate safety policies while equally promoting streamlined purchases. Although a limited number of individuals may be annoyed with over-the-top safety precautions, most customers will enjoy the heightened security that comes alongside these types of measures.

Contactless service, such as having customers scan their identification upon entry or encouraging more credit card versus cash transactions, can increase customer satisfaction, as they will feel a stronger sense of security when shopping at your dispensary. Focus on streamlining curbside pickup. Things such as requiring vehicle descriptions (e.g., license plate numbers, color, make) for curbside pickup purchases can go a long way in helping employees quickly identify customers.

Equally, be sure there is hand sanitizer available near the entrance of your dispensary. This adds a further sense of security for your shoppers. Delivery should be consistent; delays and setbacks must be minimal to win the confidence of your customers. Take the extra steps to ensure your dispensary is clean and products hygienic. All these factors work to increase customer satisfaction while maintaining their safety, and more importantly, impact the level of trust your customers have in association with your brand.

Scaling Operations Taking Advantage of Limited Competition in Emerging Markets

As stated before, several individuals—including existing and emerging cannabis businesses—are clocked out following COVID-19. This mindset is not only detrimental for operations but can also impact how you scale your business. New markets are coming online and will continue to do so as regulators are increasingly incentivized to replenish government coffers. Riverside County in California, for instance, is now allowing for capless licenses for all cannabis business types. However, what remains the key focus for regulators is expanding the number of delivery and distribution operators. In Massachusetts, delivery endorsements for dispensaries are available without a set deadline to social equity applicants and do not have a defined cap. In Illinois, the cap for transporters was equally removed, and each applicant who scores above 75% will receive a license.

These types of licenses are now more valuable than ever before for two reasons. The first reason is that regulators are keener to award delivery and transporter licenses than other types. Secondly, customers now prefer home delivery over shopping in stores due to COVID-19. With more people clocked out during these times, you have far more opportunities and far fewer competitors during application processes. Use this time to truly develop a strategy for expansion, as the chance might not come so quickly again.

Conclusion

As a final point, be sure to expand your online presence during this time. Although you may not have the capacity to reflect your company’s personality and value through quick in-store transactions, you can use social media to encourage product reviews, social interactions, and recommendations. Invest in marketing through social media platforms. Platforms such as TikTok have helped form communities of like-minded individuals. Use platforms such as that to highlight your company’s personality and values, avoid being “salesy” and focus more on being funny, entertaining and just alive. Character adds value to your business.

People want to laugh, to feel safe and they want to live. Create social interactions and immersion and always prioritize being honest and transparent with your customers. This final point stands as equally as important as the rest of the considerations highlighted throughout this article. Stay nimble, stay active and stay alert! Do not view the chaos behind this pandemic as a pit, and instead see it as a ladder. Track down opportunities, do not be afraid of change, and, more importantly, do not wait for an answer to COVID-19, be the answer.

May 27, 2020

Priorities During the Pandemic: How to Run a Lab Under COVID-19

By Dr. Peter Krause, Udo Lampe

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, most testing laboratories have been classified as relevant for the system or as carrying out essential activities for national governments. Therefore, it is crucial to maintain activities and optimally assess the changes that are occurring, framed within the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Analytica Alimentaria GmbH, a testing laboratory with its headquarters in Berlin, Germany and a branch office in Almeria, Spain, decided to focus its management on the analysis of events and the options available, at the legal and employment level, to ensure continuity of activities and reducing, as much as possible, the damage for the parties involved: employees and company. Accredited by the International Accreditation Service (IAS) to ISO/IEC 17025:2017, Analytica Alimentaria GmbH is required to implement risk-based thinking to identify, assess and treat risks and opportunities for the laboratory. Since March 12, 2020 a crisis committee was established, formed by the six members of the company’s management, covering general management, human resources, direction of production, finance and IT. The committee meets every day and it intends to:

Minimize the risks of contagion
Be able to continue providing the service required by our clients
ensure that the company as a whole will survive the economic impact of the crisis
Take measures that are within the legality of both countries where the laboratory operates (Spain and Germany),
Manage internal and external communication related to the crisis

To achieve correct decision making, daily meetings of the committee were established, to review the situations that were presented day after day and the actions that should be carried out. Each decision was analysed in a prioritized, objective, collaborative and global way.

The basis of the lab’s action plan was a well-developed risk assessment. In addition to the risk of getting a droplet or smear/contact infection with the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (risk I) by contact with other people, psychological stress caused by changing working conditions (home office), contact options and information channels were also identified (risk II).

As a result of the risk assessment, the conclusion was that a mix of various measures is the best form of prevention:

Keep distance
Avoid “super spreader” events
Personal hygiene
Regular communication between managers and personnel about the current situation and possible scenarios

The risk assessment took both areas into account. The following assessment was developed together with an external specialist and focused on risk I:

Risk I	Assessment	Protective measures / hygiene plan
Organisation
Working hours and break arrangements	High	Limit the gathering of people and ensure a minimum distance: Relocated work, break and mealtimes Create fixed groups of shift-working staff Time gap of 20 min. between the shifts Enable home office wherever it is possible
Third party access	Moderate	Few but “well-known” visitors: Reduce the number of visits and keep internal contacts to a minimum Ensure the contact chain Inform visitors about the internal rules and obtain written consent
Dealing with suspected cases	High	Isolation and immediate leave of the company: Contactless fever measurement (in case of typical symptoms) Leave the company or stay at home If the infection is confirmed, find contact persons (including customers or visitors) and inform them about a possible risk of infection
Contact with other persons
Traffic route from home to work	Moderate	Avoid public transportation: Take a car, bicycle or go by foot Enable mobile work and teleworking
At work	High	Always keep a sufficient distance of 2.0 m from people: If minimum distances cannot be maintained, wear protective masks or install physical barriers (acrylic glass) Organize traffic routes so that minimum distances can be maintained (one-way routes, floor markings indicating a distance of 2 m) Use digital meetings instead of physical ones
Sanitary facilities	Moderate	Remove virus-loaded droplet as often as possible: Provide skin-friendly liquid soaps and towel dispensers Shorten or intensify cleaning intervals Hang out instructions for washing hands at the sink Include instructions for proper hand-disinfection
Canteens, tea kitchens and break rooms	High	One person per 10 m² = minimum: Reduce the number of chairs per table Informative signs in every room, indicating the maximum number of permitted persons
Ventilation	High	Diluting or removing bioaerosols (1 µm virus-droplets): Leave as many doors open as possible Regular and documented shock ventilation every 30 minutes or more frequently, depending on the size of window Operate ventilation and air-conditioning systems, since the transmission risk is classified as low here
Use of work equipment	Moderate	Use tools and work equipment for personal use: Regular cleaning with changing use (PC, hand tools, coffee machine, …) If possible, use gloves when using equipment for a larger number of users
Protective masks	Moderate	Use of protective masks as an additional measure, indicating that this does not replace keeping distance Recommend wearing masks in commonly used areas and explain that they do not protect yourself, but help to protect others Give clear instructions (written and oral) on how to use a mask correctly and explain the use and purpose of different mask-types Distribute masks freely

A number of guidelines and concrete measures addressing the risks related to health issues are already in place. Those health issues in risk group II are more closely related to the psychological effects of the crisis, however, are also more complex to mitigate. The key strategy is communication and, in particular, actively listening to all employees of the company.

Analytica’s robust company culture, based on values established in coordination with the whole staff, has been of significant help during the crisis. The some 150 staff members are organized by over 22 team coordinators. During the crisis, active communication has been intensified significantly. The crisis management team set up regular alignment meetings with all the coordinators and with individual persons with particular situations. This way, not only was it possible to explain the development of the crisis and the subsequent measures, the conversations with coordinators were also the most important source of information enabling the appropriate decisions. The coordinators, closely aligned and in sync with management, were then able to communicate with their team members with a high degree of confidence. One outcome of the communication was a measure that proved very effective in fortifying trust within the company: all measures and evaluations, as well as a chronological review, are published in a dynamic internal report and are made available, with full transparency, to all staff members. Besides the many individual and group alignment meetings (usually held by video conference), this has been a key measure to establish confidence and security within the company.

On the other hand, the company made a great effort to balance the effect of the general closure of kindergartens and schools in Spain and Germany. Each case where staff members were required to care for children at home was studied individually and agreements were established, adapting shifts and making use of time accounts, to allow childcare at home without significant loss of income.

The success of the measures is shown by the continuous work of both laboratories during the crisis. Besides the personal tragedy of a possible infection, the identified risk to the company has the consequence of a (partial) quarantine due to an infected person in contact with the staff and the consequent loss of work-power which might lead, in extreme cases, to a closure of the laboratory. According to the governmental regulation in Germany, if an infection occurs (confirmed by the health department), contact persons cat. 1 (more than 15 min. contact face to face) are identified and sent to quarantine. Other contact persons, e.g. contact persons cat. 2 (same room without face to face) must be identified quickly with the collaboration of the infected person and notified and, if necessary, sent in quarantine. In this case, there is a confirmed emergency plan that maintains the laboratory’s ability to work, defining replacements and alternative work-flow strategies.

It has been part of our strategy to validate all our measures with the relevant guidance documents made available by the official competent institutions. The German Federal Office for Public Safety and Civil Protection (Bundesamt für Bevölkerungsschutz und Katastrophenhilfe) has published a guide, “Crisis Management in Companies, 9-point Checklist” especially for critical infrastructure companies in the CoVid-19 crisis.

Having been classified as a core business enterprise (Spain) and “relevant to the system” (Germany), we consider it important to use them as a reference to confirm our level of alignment with your proposal for crisis management.

An important effect, relevant to any leader in times of crisis, is that the confirmation of all points of such a checklist provides certain peace of mind regarding the question: Have we done everything we could?

June 19, 2019

Key Points To Incorporate Into a Sanitation Training Program

By Ellice Ogle

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To reinforce the ideas in the article, Sanitation Starting Points: More Than Sweeping the Floors and Wiping Down the Table, the main goal of sanitation is to produce safe food and to keep consumers healthy and safe from foodborne illness. With the cannabis industry growing rapidly, cannabis reaches a larger, wider audience. This population includes consumers most vulnerable to foodborne illness such as people with immunocompromised systems, the elderly, the pregnant, or the young. These consumers, and all consumers, need and deserve safe cannabis products every experience.

Sanitation is not an innate characteristic; rather, sanitation is a trained skill. To carry out proper sanitation, training on proper sanitation practices needs to be provided. Every cannabis food manufacturing facility should require and value a written sanitation program. However, a written program naturally needs to be carried out by people. Hiring experienced experts may be one solution and developing non-specialists into an effective team is an alternative solution. Note that it takes every member of the team, even those without “sanitation” in their title, to carry out an effective sanitation program.

Sanitation is a part of the Food and Drug Administration’s Code of Federal Regulations on current Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) in manufacturing, packing or holding human food (21 CFR 110). Sanitation starts at the beginning of a food manufacturing process; even before we are ready to work, there are microorganisms, or microbes, present on the work surfaces. What are microbes? At a very basic level, the effects of microbes can be categorized into the good, the bad, and the ugly. The beneficial effects are when microbes are used to produce cheese, beer or yogurt. On the other hand, microbes can have undesirable effects that spoil food, altering the quality aspects such as taste or visual appeal. The last category are microbes that have consequences such as illness, organ failure and even death.In a food manufacturing facility, minimizing microbes at the beginning of the process increases the chance of producing safe food.

Proper sanitation training allows cannabis food manufacturing facilities to maintain a clean environment to prevent foodborne illness from affecting human health. Sanitation training can be as basic or as complex as the company and its processes; as such, sanitation training must evolve alongside the company’s growth. Here are five key talking points to cover in a basic sanitation training program for any facility.

Provide the “why” of sanitation. While Simon Sinek’s TEDx talk “Start with why” is geared more towards leadership, the essential message that “Whether individuals or organizations, we follow those who lead not because we have to, but because we want to.” Merely paying someone to complete a task will not always yield the same results as inspiring someone to care about their work. Providing examples of the importance of sanitation in keeping people healthy and safe will impart a deeper motivation for all to practice proper sanitation. An entertaining illustration for the “why” is to share that scientists at the University of Arizona found that cellphones can carry ten times more bacteria than toilet seats!
Define cleaning and sanitizing. Cleaning does not equal sanitizing. Cleaning merely removes visible soil from a surface while sanitizing reduces the number of microorganisms on the clean surface to safe levels. For an effective sanitation system, first clean then sanitize all utensils and food-contact surfaces of equipment before use (FDA Food Code 2017 4-7).
Explain from the ground up. Instead of jumping into the training of cleaning a specific piece of equipment, start training with the foundational aspects of food safety. For example, a basic instruction on microbiology and microorganisms will lay down the foundation for all future training. Understanding that FATTOM (the acronym for food, acidity, temperature, time, oxygen and moisture) are the variables that any microorganism needs to grow supplies people with the tools to understand how to prevent microorganisms from growing. Furthermore, explaining the basics such as the common foodborne illnesses can reinforce the “why” of sanitation.
PPE for all employees at every stage of processing is essential
Inform about the principles of chemistry and chemicals. A basic introduction to chemicals and the pH scale can go a long way in having the knowledge to prevent mixing incompatible chemicals, prevent damaging surfaces, or prevent hurting people. Additionally, proper concentration (i.e. dilution) is key in the effectiveness of the cleaning chemicals.
Ensure the training is relevant and applicable to your company. Direct proper sanitation practices with a strong master sanitation schedule and ensure accountability with daily, weekly, monthly and annual logs. Develop sanitation standard operating procedures (SSOPs), maintain safety data sheets (SDS’s) and dispense proper protective equipment (PPE).

Overall, sanitation is everyone’s job. All employees at all levels will benefit from learning about proper sanitation practices. As such, it is beneficial to incorporate sanitation practices into cannabis food manufacturing processes from the beginning. Protect your brand from product rework or recalls and, most importantly, protect your consumers from foodborne illness, by practicing proper sanitation.