ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Service Linen Supply of Renton, Wash., is the first laundry facility to receive Hygienically Clean Food Service certification from the Textile Rental Services Association (TRSA), the association reports.
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 association says 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 textiles at customers’ locations and transporting them to our laundry plant for cleaning, to our laundering processes, to delivery back to the customer,” says 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,” adds 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 says, “confirming our ability to produce a consistent and smooth flow of hygienically clean textiles.”
TRSA says 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.
“Our emphasis is on verifying processes and quantifying the outcomes that various technical approaches achieve,” says 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.”
RELATED STORY: TRSA Adds Hygienically Clean Food Service Certification for Launderers, Feb. 10, 2016
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