Latex gloves are not used to handle food because of latex proteins which can cause allergic reactions, from skin allergies and asthma to serious breathing difficulty. Similarly, you wouldn’t want your food to contain anything that will make your customers sick.
Keeping on that same thought path, think about this for a second. Food containing pathogens or contamination can also make your customers extremely sick. How did it get there? The food could have started out that way, or something transferred the contamination onto the food. What touches food? Disposable gloves.
Disposable gloves show up in a box and we use them to handle food throughout the entire food chain. Are they clean? You’d hope so, right? The FDA requires a sample of gloves, sent for infrequent testing, to be ‘compliant for food handling.’ There are no follow-up tests to make sure gloves are clean and free from harmful pathogens and toxic compounds. Disappointing isn’t it? We agree.
We decided to do something about it. Gloves touch the majority of everything we eat. It’s imperative they minimize contamination transfer! That’s why we, at Eagle Protect, have implemented our proprietary third-party glove testing. The Delta Zero testing independently verifies a range of our gloves safe for food contact, and acts as an enhanced traceability tool to protect against glove cross-contamination and enhance our customers' food safety programs.
With 15-18% of foodborne illness outbreaks implicating disposable glove cross-contamination (CDC et al), and each outbreak estimated to cost a business up to $30 million, this is essential. |
Eagle’s multi-stage Delta Zero process of glove analysis consists of a number of proprietary risk reduction steps including targeted third-party testing and certifications to verify:
- Structural Integrity: How specific glove types, qualities and acceptable quality levels (AQL) can affect the microbial contamination of food, and the possibility of glove particle contaminants in food.
- Safe Ingredients: The chemical signature of glove raw material “ingredients” are tested, to assure they do not contain potentially toxic chemicals which could impact food safety and glove user health.
- Chemical & Toxicity: To protect the skin and health of the glove wearer.
- Cleanliness: Specific microbial limits on both the inside (skin contact) and outside (food contact) of gloves.
Interested in finding out more? Talk to our team of experts today.
Want to dig deeper? Find out how Eagle’s Delta Zero testing can safeguard your organic certification.
