Service Linen Gets 1st Hygienically Food Service Certification
Posted by Amy Donahue on Mon, Dec 12, 2016
Service Linen Supply of Renton, WA is the first laundry facility to receive a Hygienically Clean Food Service certification from TRSA, the largest association worldwide dedicated to textile services and the acknowledged leader in establishing best business practices for the industry in North America.
Service Linen Supply rents tabletops, napkins, towels, garments, floor mats and other reusable textile products with laundry service to restaurants, cafeterias, food service contractors, caterers, snack and beverage bars and similar businesses in Washington and Oregon.
The Hygienically Clean Food Service standard requires laundries to adopt the same practices to ensure laundry cleanliness as TRSA’s Hygienically Clean certifications for textile services working with food manufacturers and processors, healthcare providers and hotels.
“This certification approves our complete textile processing cycle, from picking up soiled healthcare textiles at customers’ locations and transporting them to our laundry plant for cleaning, to our laundering processes, to delivery back to the customer,” said Robert Raphael, Service Linen Supply co-president. “Fundamentals of our business, such as facility layout, personnel training and customer service, have been thoroughly evaluated.”
“Our customers can be confident our operations meet or exceed the highest standards for processing food service textiles in the industry,” added Co-President David Jassny. This includes confirmation of the operation’s adherence to safety and health standards (legally mandated and voluntary best practices) and other regulations and guidelines. The certification verifies performance consistency, he noted, “confirming our ability to produce a consistent and smooth flow of hygienically clean textiles.”
Hygienically Clean food certifications refer to the Codex (United Nations/World Health Organization) decision tree for identifying and addressing hazard analysis critical control points (HACCP) in laundry production and service processes. The certifications also incorporate a HACCP-Codex checklist in assessing the need for personal protective equipment and the Global Food Safety Initiative in detailing best practices for garment inspection and transportation.
In addition, Hygienically Clean food standards call for gauging the cleaning of hard surfaces that contact textiles by measuring the level of microorganisms present in these areas.
These steps extend the standard Hygienically Clean facility inspection and laundered product microbial testing requirements that apply to the Healthcare and Hospitality designations. “Our emphasis is on verifying processes and quantifying the outcomes that various technical approaches achieve,” said TRSA President and CEO Joseph Ricci. “In some laundry functions, different procedures effectively implement a single best practice. Laundered product testing evaluates the success of the range of techniques that a laundry chooses to deploy.”
Certification is part of TRSA’s mission to expand, protect and professionalize the textile services industry by advocating and promoting its value and providing professional development focused on developing and educating the industry regarding best practices for safety, compliance and sustainability. Last year, nearly 5,000 individuals from around the world benefited from TRSA professional development and information-sharing programs.
