The “must have” characteristics for interconnect devices that will constantly be exposed to water-based cleaning.
BY RAOUL BENOIT
You’re on vacation at the coast and you haven’t so much as caught a minnow to show for it. So, you head for the local fish market to correct the situation. You pull into the parking lot and open the car door. And wham! It hits you square in the nose. It’s that unmistakable aroma of a seafood business in full operational swing.
With just a hint of bleach in the air, nothing else on earth smells quite like it. You go inside and the smells get stronger. You look around and notice a truck just outside the back door, where workers are unloading crates full of fish and topped off with ice. The workers are wearing white rubber boots instead of shoes.
Another employee is hosing down a long stainless steel table, lifting several cutting boards as he goes. He places each cutting board directly in front of a large hole in the table. Underneath each hole is an oversized trashcan filling up with fish guts, fish heads, scales and water.
At a table next to the cutting table is another employee standing in front of a metal shield, knocking scales off a four-pound flounder with a commercial grade electric scaler. Some of the scales are being caught by the shield, but a good number fly off in several directions.
Next to the fish scaler is a three-tier stainless steel sink with a hose extending to the scaling station. The water from the hose never shuts off. As you look in a different direction, you see another person spraying the insides of a glass-front refrigerated display case. The case is still full of fish lying on a bed of ice.
You look past the truck at the back door and notice about thirty seagulls swarming in various stages of flight and landing around a dumpster they intend to raid.
As Rod Serling might say, “You have just arrived in another dimension of time and space.” You have just landed in the world of seafood processing.
Watertight connections needed
Any of these sights and smells might be pleasant and familiar to a seafood lover; however, they are just the tip of the iceberg in one of the harshest processing environments imaginable for connectors. The keyword in the world of seafood is “watertight.” The next two most important buzzwords are “Ingress Protection,” the standards for which are set by the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission). Originally, the Ingress Protection ratings represented a level of sealing for enclosures. Manufacturers of interconnect products, however, have found the standards to be a convenient measure of sealing to describe their own products.
But when designing for wet, harsh environments like seafood processing, there are other things for interconnect device makers to consider as well, as we’ll see later.
Among the myriad segments of the food and beverage industry, seafood processing is the wettest. The product itself, of course, is harvested from the water. And if the seafood is not processed on the boat, it is shipped directly to a packing house where it receives its first wash, and also gets weighed, packed and iced (more water), before being shipped to wholesale distributors and processors.
If the seafood has been sold by the packing house directly to a retailer, it is going to skip this intermediary step; however, if the seafood has been harvested on the East Coast, there is a good chance it will be going to Fulton’s Market in New York before reaching its final distribution channel. (Some estimate the portion of the East Coast harvest that is distributed through Fulton’s Market as high as 60% of the total catch.) Most of the rest of the harvest is sold to independent wholesale distributors. If these distributors cater to the grocery industry, they bear the most burdens of the entire cycle regarding processing and packaging.
In the early stages of the product life cycle, the seafood will go through some form of initial processing. It could be shrimp being washed, shelled, deveined, rinsed again, cooked and then packaged for shipping. It could just as likely be fish being hosed down, scaled, filleted, rinsed, iced again and then refrigerated before shipping.
No matter what type of processing, it is going to involve water and hose down. This is the characteristic unique to seafood processing that makes it such a tough environment within which electronic equipment must operate. (See sidebar, “So, why so much water?”) And that unique characteristic is also what creates challenges for the vendors who manufacture processing equipment and the connectivity required, and to management responsible for the equipment in such facilities.
Says Everett Pitts of B&B Seafood in Richmond, VA, “Anytime you mix cleaning and sanitation efforts with electrical and electronic equipment, there is a certain amount of risk involved. Our practice is to clean to a level that exceeds standard compliance of regulations. We feel that we owe it to our customers. But anytime you use strong cleaning agents and water, the potential is there for you to cause your own equipment’s failure.”
Pitts continues, “We try to be as careful as we can to minimize exposure of electronic components directly to the water, but sometimes it happens. Equipment failure in the seafood business just goes with the territory, but hopefully, downtime is minimized.”
In seafood processing, hose down is not a daily or even an hourly occurrence, which is the case with other types of food processors-it goes on constantly. A large portion of the seafood life cycle is not automated, and processing requires people handling the product, typically, in the same area where machinery is operating.
And that continual hose down creates problems by proximity for both equipment and interconnects.
The effort to make handling seafood safer and more manageable creates the potential for other problems. This unique characteristic sets seafood processing apart from all others, and is also the reason why it is the toughest of all the food processing environments.
It starts with the cable
But one way to avoid downtime from failed equipment and connections from constant water exposure is by carefully planning the selection of processing equipment.
What are the “must include” characteristics for equipment that will constantly be exposed to water-based cleaning? A good place to start is the cabling. Experience and time-honored testing have proven that PVC cable is more resistant to harsh cleaning chemicals than PUR cable. Not only will the PVC cable last longer under the duress of the harsh conditions in a food processing plant, but the up front costs are lower when compared to PUR cable.
When selecting cable assemblies, it is best to use overmolded connectors when possible. During the overmolding of the manufacturing process, the overmolding material chemically bonds to the cable’s outer jacket, providing a watertight seal. The overmolding lends the added benefit of strain relief to the connector, assuring power or signal transmission integrity.
When choosing I/O boxes, Ingress Protection is one of the most crucial factors. Any junction box expected to perform outside of an enclosure cabinet needs to be IP67-rated as a minimum standard if it is going to be exposed directly to hose down.
Ideally, epoxy should be used inside the housing to completely encapsulate the PCB to seal out water. Epoxy also helps protect the components from temperature extremes, shock, and vibration Even small components, such as receptacles, can benefit from epoxy inside the outer shell or housing to protect internal electronic parts.
Another major consideration is raw materials. Acquiescence regarding breakdown as a way of life does not have to be the norm for the seafood processor. Tough environments demand tough materials to measure up. For example, Lumberg, Inc. (www.lumberg.com) offers a line of stainless steel products designed for the food and beverage industry.
Health departments are already requiring unitized, seamless, stainless steel sinks for food processing. The next logical step is to see this trend become more pervasive in areas like electronic components and related peripheral equipment.
Stainless steel solutions
Because of the innate strength of stainless steel and manufacturers being responsive to the food and beverage industry’s needs by designing components to meet processing challenges, the trend is likely to promulgate rapidly.
Seafood processing is becoming more automated, and as facilities become more automated as well, the urgency to reduce downtime due to equipment and connectorization failure from hose downs will become even greater. Specifying the right equipment, and knowing the connectivity requirements, will become a more crucial element in the whole process as seafood companies strive to fine-tune their operations to remain competitive, maintain quality control, and grow sales.
RAOUL BENOIT is marketing communications director for Lumberg, Inc., Midlothian, VA (rbenoit@lumbergusa.com)
So, why so much water?
There are several reasons why continual hose downs are necessary for the seafood processing industry. Since seafood is harvested from water, effective distribution and storage need to mirror the habitat from which the product came. By maintaining the product’s natural moisture level, you effectively mimic the environment in which seafood lives and, therefore, retard the decaying process.
Another reason seafood processors do a lot of rinsing is to make the product easier to handle. Fish produce a slime that starts in the glandular cells, which make a glycoprotein, which when combined with water forms mucus. This mucus helps the fish fight off parasites and to suffocate pathogens, which might otherwise settle in the skin. The slime also helps the fish with osmoregulation to balance gas transmission through the skin.
Slime also reduces friction and turbulence, enhancing motility; however, that makes handling a challenge. Rinsing is the most common way for seafood processors to make the product easier to handle.
Another reason for frequent hose down is marketability. Frequently covering fish, scallops or shrimp with ice shavings in a display case is standard practice. Even in a refrigerated display case, taking a water hose and spraying the seafood on display is an equally accepted practice. As the ice melts, the dead cells of the seafood absorb the water of the melting ice and become plump and turgid, which gives the seafood an appearance of freshness in addition to modestly affecting weight at the point of sale.
Remember, water makes for 1) easier handling, 2) fresh appearance and 3) extended shelf life. From the seafood processor’s perspective, all three reasons are compelling enough by themselves to justify the hose down.
Connecting with safety issues
But the first three reasons pale in comparison to the most important one for hose down in the seafood processing environment: Public safety. The only way a seafood processor can ensure public safety is by running a clean operation, and the only way he can effectively run a clean operation is by complying with or exceeding the standards of the health department.
And the only way to comply with or exceed those standards is by implementing good cleaning practices, and following proven storage practices that comply with temperature guidelines established by the health department. What all food processors are combating are pathogens and bacteria that can cause food borne illnesses, which in extreme cases could even lead to death. The culprits have different symptoms, but they have one thing in common: Their main avenue for attack is through our food sources.
To combat the likes of bacteria and pathogens, and diseases like E. coli, salmonella, listeria and hepatitis, most food processors employ what is known as a HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point). An HACCP is a system that manages what are known as the Critical Control Points, which are the key steps in the life cycle of food products that directly affect safety.
The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) imposes, administrates and enforces safety practices that include HACCP systems in the workplace. HACCP systems provide guidelines for food processors to follow, but at the same time, the FDA uses these systems as an educational tool for consumers.
According to the FDA, “This system focuses on identifying and preventing hazards that could cause food-borne illnesses rather than relying on spot-checks of manufacturing processes and random sampling of finished seafood products to ensure safety”.
Therefore, a critical control point would be any point in a food product lifecycle, from the harvesting stage to the dinner table, where a hazard can be identified and where measures can be implemented to ensure safety to the consuming public.
For example, a distributor delivers 200 lbs. of freshly caught King Mackerel to a seafood company in the Midwest that was caught the morning before. This business immediately stores most of the order in a walk-in refrigeration unit that complies with temperature standards; however, some of the mackerel has already been sold to a local restaurant, so that portion of the order is left on the loading dock to be reloaded in another delivery truck for delivery that afternoon. The summer sun melts all the ice that was keeping the fish cold. By the time it is delivered to the loading dock of the restaurant, the product is actually 60° F.
This cross-section of the lifecycle can be identified as a critical control point. Not only can you identify the vulnerability of the fish on the loading dock, but a few simple procedures, such as adding ice to the fish and reloading it to a refrigerated delivery truck right away, could have prevented a safety hazard. Poor management of temperature controls created this critical control point. -RB
