5 Ways to Get Proactive on Sanitation

Cleaning and sanitation are the cornerstones of food safety. They help prevent pest infestation, allergen cross-contamination, and foodborne illness, and are essential for ensuring the production of safe, high-quality products.

Robust sanitation programs also help companies meet regulatory guidelines and prevent devastating food safety incidents that can sink their reputation and bottom line.

Companies must champion the mindset that where sanitation ends, production begins. It is part of the foundation of food safety and should be central to what drives your food production process.

Salmonella, Listeria, and E. Coli - Behind the Headlines

According to the Centers for Disease Control, out of 84 multistate outbreaks investigated in 2023, 82 were caused by Salmonella (54), E. Coli (15), and Listeria (13). These 84 outbreaks resulted in 3,153 illnesses, 942 hospitalizations, and 10 deaths

Altogether, the CDC has found that Salmonella bacteria cause as many as 1.35 million infections per year in the United States, with contaminated food the source of most illnesses. The CDC also estimates that only 1 in every 30 Salmonella infections is diagnosed.

Though it causes far fewer illnesses, Listeria is far more lethal than Salmonella, accounting for 172 deaths per year according to the CDC. Listeria has made headlines repeatedly for its role in major food safety outbreaks. Most notably, the Boar’s Head deli meat outbreak in 2024, which left 10 people dead and dozens hospitalized across the country.

Following that outbreak, a report by the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service cited repeated “inadequate sanitation practices at the company’s production facility in Virginia, stating these failures contributed directly to the outbreak.

The dangers posed by these contaminants make the importance of cleaning and sanitation painfully clear: You don’t just clean a facility because it’s dirty; you must take a proactive approach to sanitation to prevent food safety incidents.

5 Ways to Get Proactive on Sanitation

1. Implement an Environmental Monitoring Program (EMP)

Your environmental monitoring program is the first line of defense for your production facility and key to developing a “seek and destroy” approach to contaminants in the production process.

A strong EMP involves extensive and frequent sampling of every zone in the production environment in order to detect the presence of pathogens like Listeria before they reach a food-contact surface.

Your EMP requires getting proactive and hunting for bacteria with the understanding that pathogens are common and often brought in by people and ingredients. You should adopt the attitude that if you haven’t found pathogens in your swabs, it’s because you aren’t looking hard enough, not because your facility is clean enough to not need stronger sanitation measures.

2. Emphasize Hygienic Design

The best laid sanitation plans can be foiled if you don’t first focus on hygienic design for your facilities and equipment.

Hygienic design is essential for food safety because it helps ensure that equipment can be cleaned and sanitized effectively.

A systematic review published in March 2026, found that hygienically designed food processing equipment offers “three main advantages: it supports product quality, improves food safety and reduces costs.”

Such equipment includes features that “minimize biological, chemical, and physical hazards and risks of contamination while facilitating effective cleaning and maintenance.”

This means the equipment doesn’t have the nooks and crannies where contaminants can thrive, and can be easily broken down and cleaned. It also means facilities are designed in a way that eliminates cross-traffic between different areas, through the use of measures such as physical barriers and controlled air pressure.

3. Invest in Preventive Maintenance

The USDA report on the Boar’s Head facility released in January 2025 stated that inspectors at the company’s Virginia plant found dripping condensation on exposed product and “cracks, holes, and broken flooring that could hold moisture and contribute to wet conditions.”

Preventive maintenance measures can help environmental harborage points like broken flooring or exposed pipes that create contamination threats in the production environment. These measures mean that the onus doesn’t fall solely on the cleaning and sanitation efforts of employees and help prevent the worsening of production area threats.

Preventive maintenance requires that a facility creates a strong feedback loop between the maintenance team and the employees responsible for cleaning so that both are on the same page and have implemented the same proactive approach to sanitation.

And beyond foodborne bacteria that can harbor broken equipment, preventive maintenance also means that equipment is less likely to break down, degrade, and produce foreign object contaminants (like shards of metal or plastic) that are introduced into food production surfaces.

4. Verify and Validate in Real Time

Sanitation requires a dynamic, proactive approach. It means not just always cleaning and swabbing the same exact spots every shift, but using swabbing and testing to determine your high-risk areas.

It means using the data from testing to verify that the frequency of your cleaning is correct and that you are focusing on the most high-priority areas and taking a risk-based approach.

This approach is best achieved through implementing real-time verification and digital recording of testing data and all cleaning actions taken, which can then be easily accessed on the floor by your sanitation team.

5. Train and Empower Your Team

The best sanitation tools and practices can be in vain if your employees don’t have the training to perform sanitation correctly, and are not empowered to take decisive action when problems arise.

Invest in training that teaches your team about sanitation best practices and the threats to look out for on the floor. This training is essential for developing a safety culture in which employees are empowered and confident to “stop the line” when problems arise without waiting for direction from management.

By investing ahead of time in the training needed to create this culture, you can ensure that employees stay vigilant and see sanitation as a shared responsibility, and give yourself a proactive edge.

Master Sanitation with Rootwurks

The Rootwurks LMS was designed to help food manufacturing companies develop a food safety culture where sanitation is integrated into daily operations. We offer specialized courses on implementing cleaning and sanitation programs and Environmental Monitoring Programs available now on our online store.

To learn more about how we help companies build custom digital training that elevates safety, reach out to a member of our team here: