There is a new urgency to understand the fundamentals of hygienic equipment design since we addressed this subject in a column last year.

With new regulations and industry changes, it is vital for processors to stay on top of government demands to ensure the safety of the food they are manufacturing, producing, selling and distributing.

How does the Food Safety Modernization Act (and specifically Preventive Controls for Human Food) affect your Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP), food safety plans and your Quality Control Laboratory?

Where can food industry professionals interested in hygienic equipment design find great practical foundation knowledge? Technical educational programs offered by universities and/or related institutions account for a lot, if and where such specialized training exists.

The LactiCyte-HD from Page & Pedersen provides automated, rapid microscopic SCC that enables real-time somatic cell counts for cow, goat, sheep and/or buffalo milk.

The Food and Drug Administra-tion’s time-clock for enforcing the most important FSMA regulation, the “Preventive Controls for Human Foods (PCHF)” started in mid-September 2016. As I write this in early December, it appears that FDA will be training its field investigators and regional milk specialists well past the end of 2016.

Hygienic design is a design process or a set of design principles to manage hazards and reduce food safety risks in food processing equipment, processes and facilities. For this article, we will concentrate solely on equipment with one very big proviso – equipment design is only one of many inter-related elements.

Today, consumers in the United States can experience a huge variety of affordable, fresh and innovative dairy foods, not only from across the country, but also from around the globe, just by visiting the local grocery store — an experience that was considered impossible only a few decades ago. Advances in food science, processing, packaging and a tremendous expansion of the cold chain distribution system are a few of the ways by which this progress has been achieved.