For a food business operator, food safety starts at the conceptualisation stage. As they conceptualise their operations, thoughts about the flow of ingredients, layout of equipment, people, and raw and cooked products must be highlighted. Food is handled differently depending on its nature, that is: Perishable versus non-perishable. In addition, how food is treated is dependent on the level of food safety risk presented. Risk assessment informs the preventive approach that must be designed and implemented.

One such approach is that of hygienic zoning. This is simply using hygienic requirements to divide a facility into zones; the division is based on the risk level of the particular activity. Hygienic zoning is similar to sanitary design but must not be confused with environmental monitoring zones. Sanitary design techniques are applied to manufacturing and storages facilities in the installation, design and maintenance of building and equipment to prevent biological, microbiological, chemical and physical hazards. Different sectors of the food industry will require different sanitary design; for example dairy versus canning plant. While the environmental monitoring zone concept is focused on pathogens, a facility is divided into four zones, each with its own sampling and testing strategy.

The goal of hygienic zoning is to prevent contamination with extraneous matter, chemical, microbiological and allergenic material during all stages. The success of the zoning is dependent on employee practices, physical separation, process flow and training programme. In an ideal situation, the facility would be designed with a flow pattern to prevent people, raw material and equipment from coming in contact with the finished product. The flow would be one-directional with logical sequencing from raw material to finished product storage; alas we are not in an ideal world. For the most part, food business operators are not a part of the design phase of the building as it is a leased space. However, it is within their control to retrofit this space based on their operations; this is when the area must be divided based on food safety risk.

Physical separation can be achieved by installing a wall or a door that prevents re-entry. The aim is to have a physical separation between raw and finished products and to have minimal entry into critical areas. Sometimes an organisation may split the facility into a raw side and a cook side. Another strategy is for employees to wear different colours dependent on work activity; this also provides a quick way to identify if someone is out of place. With process flow the aim is to have raw and in-process ingredients entering at a different place from where cooked and finished products are exiting. Employees must be so trained that they understand what is hygienic zoning and the risk rating of each activity. Those working in areas of high contamination, such as receival, must not have access to finished products areas. It must be noted that each zone has its own cleaning and employee’s rules; the standard must be known by all.

For small businesses, separation into clean zones and unclean zones may be sufficient as long as it is based on risk assessment and supported by strong employee practices and training. For larger business there may be division into basic, medium and high hygiene zone. While not an ideal world, hygienic zoning is a food safety must for food business operations.