Single-use, nitrile gloves are important for the cultivation sector. As a result of they’re required and ordered in bulk time and time once more, workers sometimes suppose nothing of opening a freshly sealed field full of fresh, toxin- and pathogen-free gloves. Most assume when a brand new field is opened for the primary time, the product inside might be really food-safe and freed from any supplies or organisms that would trigger cross-contamination.
However what if this assumption is inaccurate? At Eagle Shield, our proprietary testing revealed there might certainly be a cross-contamination danger.
Greater than fifteen years in the past in New Zealand, I based a glove provide and distribution firm that expanded to america in 2016. Having visited numerous manufacturing services in southeast Asia and witnessing firsthand the unsanitary circumstances in lots of supposedly sterile factories, we dedicated ourselves to provide merchandise of the very best manufacturing requirements. An enormous a part of this dedication included a price range for ongoing analysis and growth, primarily to conduct third-party glove testing and evaluation of potential contaminants—all to make sure our gloves adhere to the very best stage of constant glove security and efficiency.
We teamed up with the B. Michaels Group, one of many foremost product security consultants within the hygiene sector. Barry Michaels has greater than forty years of expertise within the discipline of microbiology analysis, with a concentrate on a variety of contaminants and pathogens. After 4 years of unbiased analysis and evaluation, we introduced our findings on the 2021 Worldwide Affiliation of Meals Safety (IAFP) convention. After testing twenty-six totally different manufacturers of recent and unused single-use gloves, we recognized pathogens that would pose important public well being hazards and dangers of recall, together with Listeria monocytogenes, Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae, and Bacillus anthracis (anthrax). There have been additionally indications of fecal content material on virtually seven out of ten gloves examined These had been new single-use gloves proper out of the field. This raises a query: Precisely when and the place within the provide chain does glove contamination happen?
Glove factories supplying the U.S. meals trade will not be subjected to rigorous monitoring or scrutiny by the Meals and Drug Administration (FDA). Particularly, the FDA Meals Code for disposable gloves (FDA Title 21, Part 177) doesn’t require gloves to be intact, clear, or sanitary, and it requires no testing upon arrival within the U.S. Outbreaks resulting in meals recollects occur far too regularly, inflicting antagonistic monetary and model ramifications. One study revealed every single occasion of a meals recall bears a monetary value of greater than $10 million. In our view, these unfavourable penalties name for a extra rigorous FDA testing routine together with testing for uncooked materials toxicity, chemical composition, and different pathogenic contaminants.
Relating to sourcing high quality single-use gloves, hashish operations are subjected to the identical quantity of danger as companies within the a lot bigger food-handling trade. What occurred at Freya Farm in 2020 is a cautionary tale. The pesticide-free hashish producer and processor in Conway, Washington was pressured to concern a recall after the chemical o-Phenylphenol, listed as a possible carcinogen underneath California’s Proposition 65, was discovered on its merchandise. Testing traced the antimicrobial compound again to the FDA-compliant food-grade gloves utilized by Freya throughout packaging.
Eagle Shield’s unbiased third-party testing and evaluation aren’t completed but. Our conclusions past the preliminary findings are presently within the peer-review course of, and we hope to publish the complete outcomes later this yr. Within the meantime, it’s our mission to coach the hashish cultivation and food-handling industries in regards to the frequent bodily, chemical, and microbiological hazards current within the disposable-glove provide chain.
We do have the means to mitigate the danger of cross-contamination available in the market. Publicity inside the hashish trade will be diminished, however provided that suppliers select to companion with producers who adhere to the very best manufacturing requirements for constant uncooked materials high quality and hygiene practices. Suppliers and distributors who follow dependable and frequent quality-control measures, coupled with routine auditing practices, will guarantee the very best requirements of security and efficiency for the nitrile gloves used every single day within the hashish trade.
The subsequent time you buy a brand new field of single-use gloves, please take into account the dangers they doubtlessly may pose to your small business and workers.
Steve Ardagh is founder and CEO of Eagle Protect, a disposable-glove provider devoted to responsibly sourcing high quality merchandise for buyer security and danger mitigation. After establishing Eagle Shield as an trade chief in New Zealand, he relocated to the U.S. in 2016 and launched Eagle Shield PBC, bringing with him Eagle’s mission to supply merchandise which might be licensed food-safe, ethically sourced, and environmentally sound.