Prior to traveling to New Orleans for Sanitation Essentials Training (June 2021), CFS issued an update per CDC guidelines on COVID protocols. It included clear instructions for vaccinated and non-vaccinated participants and specific guidelines to follow. While on campus is was a pleasure to see so many smiling faces and it gave everyone a safe sense of life going back to “normal”.

Last week we had a week long inspection which included a swab-a-thon.  Out of the 85 swabs taken, none came back positive for Listeria spp.  I would like to thank the CFS team for all of their hard work driving us to this goal.  We are on our journey to becoming the best bakery in the country and we will continue to be working with you in the near future.  I just wanted to say thank you for helping us!

I received [Sanitation Essentials] training at your New Orleans facility a few years back as well as your Food Safety consulting services at our plant back in 2019. I've learned a lot both there and since then. Your Food Safety Specialist was and still is a contact for me till this day. Thanks and keep up the good work!!!

These days at Hygienic Design Training have been unforgettable, amazing and fun. We’ve learned many useful “Great Ideas”  that soon will improve our facilities and make us better cheese-makers.

The Hygienic Design Training was a really good experience. Thanks to my fellow participants for the shared knowledge and many thanks to the CFS Team for the well-prepared training.

What differentiated the CFS assessment from previous inspections and training we have enlisted, is that CFS provides expertise and practical resources in sanitation principles, holistic food safety procedures and execution methods. We were particularly impressed by the equipment hygienic design concepts and thorough post-sanitation inspection. All of our factory employees benefited from this CFS visit and training.

[A Dedicated Sanitation Essentials Training is a] Fantastic opportunity for people to deep dive into different sanitation practices. This training is a full on workshop where the participants get to see the real life challenges of allergen cleaning and explore wet and dry cleaning methodologies. By taking part in the cleaning activities, it challenges the participants understanding and motivates them to turn sanitation activities into structured improvement opportunities with a safety mindset.

The most impactful portion of the training for me was the personal stories of those affected by illness or death resulting from poor hygienic design and sanitation practices - this elevates the purpose of food safety to a very personal level. We, as maintenance professionals, have a duty to safeguard the public.

Learning about hygienic design and refurbishment of conveyors will make the future better for our maintenance department and company as a whole.

The Intralox training was very informative and educational, helping me understand how belting, rollers and drives should be installed. The enthusiasm the Intralox and CFS Team brought with them was passed on to our maintenance team - the entire group came out of the training with ideas and are ready to start making our system better. The way the Intralox and CFS Team explained that food safety is a team effort was an important message for our techs and sanitors to hear. I am encouraged that our maintenance and sanitation teams will be collaborating on conveyor projects going forward.

The interactive and hands-on training [in the FoodSafe Conveyor Workshop] really helped clarify the training material for all of us. Our teams have benefited greatly by learning so much about proper belting techniques, maintenance, and care as well as all the do’s/don’ts associated with Intralox products. Learnings from this training will help us with the review of our current techniques and practices and also focus on future improvements

Click here for a (video) impression of the McCormick dedicated Sanitation Essentials Training in New Orleans.

I really enjoyed the [Dedicated Sanitation Essentials] training. The process reminded me of when I started plant work 30 years ago. Back then I was only passively doing the cleaning work. The pragmatic CFS training enabled us to truly appreciate the importance of, and how-to achieve an effective clean. This training will certainly be of great help to my food factory sanitation management. I will share what I learned with the plant management team shortly, to start change, enhance understanding and then implement the right actions. I am looking forward to your other training courses and plant support from the CFS team, thanks again!

This Sanitation Essential Training is definitely one of the most valuable trainings for me. It went from the theoretical concepts to a practical workshop, enabled us to verify the assumptions and methodologies, extremely interesting experience.

Click here for a (video) impression of a Lantmännen Unibake dedicated Sanitation Essentials Training in Amsterdam.

Rich Products Corporation was developing programs to not only further educate our sanitation leaders, but also to raise awareness within the organization of the importance of sanitation and its relationship with food safety. With help of CFS, we have greatly strengthened our knowledge while finding a trusted and expert partner in sanitation and food safety.

Our Sanitation and QA Leaders, along with our facility Plant Managers from our world headquarters and from twenty‐one (21) US and Canada facilities have participated in, and learned a great deal from, the sanitation, hygienic design, and sanitation leadership courses provided by CFS.

Rich Products Corporation has utilized the expertise of CFS at plant level, through consultation for remediation of food safety challenges. Due to their extensive and varied skill‐sets in sanitation and food safety, CFS provided expertise that aligned with the specific food process and challenge involved.

I believe one of our team’s biggest learnings from this 1.5 day CFS Hygienic Design and Food Safety Workshop is that hygienic design is not just a ‘mechanical thing’ or just and ‘engineering thing’. It involves mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, manufacturing and assembly. All of these groups have an impact on our customers’ ability to properly clean a piece of equipment. Any one of the following elements, that these groups control, can either make the ability to appropriately clean a piece of equipment better or worse, including: physical design, component selection, part fabrication quality, supply line routings, and hardware selection.

Your presentation today on “Design for Sanitation and Maintenance” was excellent. It is a pleasure to know that we can have access to [CFS] Food Safety Specialists, that can support Scott in developing machines in compliance with the food safety standards. As you said, the simple and clean solution will always be more suitable for cleaning, therefore more food safety compliant, and at the same time be more efficient, easier to maintain, and longer-lasting equipment.

Fantastic way to deliver content! Amazing to experience near real-world challenges and constraints at this Hygienic Design Training.

One of the best training/workshops I have received. If you are in the food safety business this one is for you! #HygienicDesignTraining

We all have some knowledge on hygienic designs. In my past, I was more focused on the design of equipment, but I still enriched this skill thanks to tools shared and also hands-on activities, expert experiences and real case examples shared between participants. [In the CFS Hygienic Design Training,] we applied these tools in a hands-on manner to real equipment and highlighted the improvements of the design with their evolution. This will help me with the review of different designs, the development of plant requirements/standards and FAT completion. It will benefit my ongoing projects by making sure that contractors follow proper design in building and installation of process equipment. Sharing experiences with other participants was also particularly constructive all along the training. The training also covers design of building including material choices and the study of flow paths in the overall plant. This will help me lead projects with a better focus on hygienic design and therefor will profit Lactalis in the long run. The importance of the involvement of the different stakeholders (Sanitation, Production, Quality, Safety, Maintenance, etc.) in modifications and new installations were highlighted by the trainers and in the group activities. For these reasons this training matches completely my activities and fits Lactalis goals. I will share this knowledge with our team.

Overall this [Hygienic Design] Training was a mind changer. I am going home with a different vision…. Thank you.

Joining the Hygienic Design Training with some of my colleagues from UVM and Cornell University, we all come from a background in educating the produce industry. We were really blown away by the training we received and are sharing learnings in a number of ways. I specifically enjoyed learning about specific equipment design elements that make equipment and facilities easy to clean. Taking a look at utilities with a close eye was new to me and was very interesting. Thank you for expanding our knowledge on this topic, it helped really spark ideas about how we can reduce risks and promote safe food in the produce industry.

Recommend this training, really informative. Superb presentations and practical workshops!! Thank you for a great couple of days!

Thank you for all your efforts in the organization and managing of training. I think it was the best training course I've ever done. Please extend my congratulations to every member of CFS involved in the training.

We definitely appreciate the assistance and continuous learnings, we received from our CFS partners, during the assessment in our bakery as well as during my training in New Orleans. In my opinion, CFS provides the best training in the world; for hygiene programs, for food manufacturing. I personally appreciate it! We are looking forward to continuously working and improving with the CFS methodology. Thanks again!

Excellent trainers, hands-on knowledge, interactive workshops, interesting topics, what can you ask more? A must-have training, when it comes to Hygienic Design!

Thank you for the training, I definitely have a different perspective from the maintenance side of things. I learned that not only sanitation but everyone has a responsibility to do it the right way in every aspect.

Nicely separated topics. I came away with distinct learnings from each workshop, and I also came away with an understanding/path of how I can influence hygienic design in our facility. Great job!

Thank you so much. I enjoyed the training and working with your team. I have 15 years of experience in Sanitation so none of this was really “new” to me, however, we all get a little complacent over time and sometimes lose sight of the big picture. This training was great for bringing things back to the front of my mind and refreshing my perspective on effective sanitation!

The hands-on Wet and Dry cleaning workshops were fantastic to support the learning and networking experience. Having several Food Industry ‘Veterans’ in the room maximizes this learning.

The training was stellar, and being a relative newbie to the industry, it was a bit daunting at first. But, the instructors were great in explaining things and the people in the class were outstanding in dragging me along as I asked a million questions. My boss seems rather pleased with what I learned and he is looking at getting more of my colleagues into this class. I appreciate your efforts in putting on this great training!

There are other notes that I will take away from the training session, but SSOP development and implementation is the main one I'm planning to implement across our seven plants. Overall, this training was one of my favorites. I am a hands-on learner. I liked how there was classroom sessions prior to getting out and actually applying what we learned in the classroom previous to the breakout sessions, thank-you!

Your seminar was probably the best one I ever went to and I am still using the materials for continuous improvements in our sanitation world here.

It was a pleasure to meet you all and hopefully I will see you again next year at the Hygienic Design Training…..to win the next trophy.  Once a trophy hunter, always a trophy hunter.

Thank you for the great organization. It was really good experience for me to join this training program.

Sanitation Essentials Training attended: 3 days of intense and challenging experience but with a fabulous training team and a great group to share and enjoy! Great time...

My colleagues and I gained helpful insights and solutions to assist with our preventive programs and techniques. I was impressed with the hands on sessions and your team's professionalism and knowledge in both wet and dry environments.

I had such a great experience and thought your knowledge and training was phenomenal. It would be great to keep in touch and to have a great resource, like Commercial Food Sanitation, in this industry.

I had an amazing experience with the training program. Everyone on your staff were extremely helpful in every way. Please send my thanks to everyone who shared their knowledge and made us feel very welcome.

That was a wonderful 2½ day training. Very well organized, detailed, very comprehensive field applications, networking with partner/ supplier companies for the future, just perfect.

The Sanitation Essentials Training in Amsterdam has been a very valuable training session for me. Experienced trainers run a good mix of theory and practical, hands-on sessions around all sanitation related aspects, in a professional and fun format. I enjoyed the social networking and experience exchanges with peers across countries and industries. This Sanitation Essentials Training is highly recommendable.

Thank you again for the wonderful course that you and your team have put together; I am taking away a lot from it and have already recommended sending more key people from FreshPoint.

I thoroughly enjoyed all of the presentations and breakout sessions. I, also believe there is a lot of value in the team competition as it allows companies to interact and share best practices in sanitation programs. As an industry we all need to work together, evaluate and share information for continuous improvement.

It was a pleasure meeting you and attending the Sanitation Essentials Training last week. I found the courses to be very beneficial and I have taken a lot of good things back for our plant.

Last week we had a week long inspection which included a swab-a-thon.  Out of the 85 swabs taken, none came back positive for Listeria spp.  I would like to thank the CFS team for all of their hard work driving us to this goal.  We are on our journey to becoming the best bakery in the country and we will continue to be working with you in the near future.  I just wanted to say thank you for helping us!

I received [Sanitation Essentials] training at your New Orleans facility a few years back as well as your Food Safety consulting services at our plant back in 2019. I've learned a lot both there and since then. Your Food Safety Specialist was and still is a contact for me till this day. Thanks and keep up the good work!!!

What differentiated the CFS assessment from previous inspections and training we have enlisted, is that CFS provides expertise and practical resources in sanitation principles, holistic food safety procedures and execution methods. We were particularly impressed by the equipment hygienic design concepts and thorough post-sanitation inspection. All of our factory employees benefited from this CFS visit and training.

Rich Products Corporation was developing programs to not only further educate our sanitation leaders, but also to raise awareness within the organization of the importance of sanitation and its relationship with food safety. With help of CFS, we have greatly strengthened our knowledge while finding a trusted and expert partner in sanitation and food safety.

Rich Products Corporation has utilized the expertise of CFS at plant level, through consultation for remediation of food safety challenges. Due to their extensive and varied skill‐sets in sanitation and food safety, CFS provided expertise that aligned with the specific food process and challenge involved.