Glass breakage in a food factory: the clean up procedure, the glass register and audits

A light diffuser cracks above the packing line at 14:20 on a Friday. What happens in the next ten minutes decides whether a shard ends up in a customer’s mouth. A written glass breakage procedure that your food factory team has actually practised turns that moment into a routine, and a well kept glass register makes sure it happens less often.

Why glass and brittle plastics need their own GMP control

Glass is one of the few foreign bodies that your end of line equipment may not catch. Metal detectors do not find glass, and whether X-ray finds it depends on the size of the fragment, its density and the product around it. When glass breaks it scatters into many pieces, some too small to see, and they can travel several metres from the point of breakage. A sharp fragment in food can cut the mouth or throat, and a single incident can lead to a recall.

Brittle hard plastics behave in a similar way. Light covers, visors on equipment, gauge faces, clear guards, scoops and clipboards can all crack and shed sharp pieces. That is why good manufacturing practice treats glass and brittle plastics as a separate control: first remove what you can, then protect what must stay, then inspect what remains and know exactly what to do when something breaks.

Building the glass and hard plastics register

The register is a list of every glass and brittle plastic item in or near production, by area. Walk each area with the hygiene or maintenance lead and record:

• a unique number for each item, ideally marked on or next to the item;
• the area and exact location, such as “Line 2, above filler”;
• a description and the material: glass, toughened glass, polycarbonate, acrylic;
• the quantity where several identical items sit together;
• whether it is above or near open product or packaging;
• the protection in place, such as a shatterproof sleeve or a cover;
• a risk rating and inspection frequency.

Typical entries include windows, light fittings, sight glasses on tanks, pressure and temperature gauges, thermometer faces, clocks, mirrors, computer and scale screens, laboratory glassware, forklift lights and indicator lenses, and clear plastic guards on machines. Do not forget items that arrive later, such as a contractor’s lamp or a new screen on a checkweigher. Every new item should be added before it goes into service.

Where you can, remove the risk altogether. Replace glass light fittings above open product with shatterproof fittings or fit protective sleeves, swap glass clock faces for plastic, and move glassware out of production into the laboratory.

Inspection frequency and what an inspection checks

Set the frequency from the risk rating. Items directly above open product or on a filling line may need checking at the start of every shift. Items in packed product areas may need a weekly check, and windows in a corridor with no exposed product perhaps a monthly one. Write the reasoning into the register so an auditor can see why each frequency was chosen.

An inspection checks that each item:

1. is present and in the location recorded;
2. is intact, with no cracks, chips or missing pieces;
3. still has its protective cover or sleeve fitted and undamaged;
4. still carries its identification number.

The inspector signs and dates the record, and any damaged item is raised immediately for replacement. A cracked but unbroken item is still a finding: product beneath it must be protected until it is replaced.

The breakage procedure, step by step

1. Stop and alert. The person who sees or hears the breakage stops the line or the activity and calls the supervisor. Nobody walks through the area.
2. Cordon off. The supervisor marks off the affected zone with tape or barriers. Size the zone generously, allowing for the height the item fell from and how far fragments may have travelled.
3. Quarantine product and packaging. All open product, work in progress and exposed packaging inside the zone is placed on hold and labelled. Include product produced since the last satisfactory inspection of the item if you cannot be sure when it broke.
4. Clean up with the dedicated kit. Use a glass breakage kit kept only for this purpose: a colour coded brush and dustpan, disposable gloves, adhesive tape or a damp cloth for fine fragments, labelled bags and a rigid container for the waste. Clean from the edge of the zone inwards.
5. Check people and equipment. Check the footwear and clothing of everyone who was in the zone. Strip down and clean equipment where fragments could lodge, such as conveyor belts, hoppers and guards.
6. Inspect and release. QA, or another trained person who did not do the clean up, inspects the area and signs the release before production restarts.
7. Record and replace. Complete the glass incident record, replace or remove the item, restock the kit, and update the register.

Then ask why it broke. A forklift mast striking a light fitting is a layout or training problem, not just a broken light.

Product on hold: deciding what to scrap

The default is simple: open product inside the zone is scrapped, not reworked and not sorted by hand. For product further away, or packed product, QA decides based on how far fragments could have reached, whether the product was exposed at the time and whether the packaging protected it. Record the decision, the quantities and the disposal.

A worked example from a bakery in Gqeberha

A bakery in Gqeberha had a fluorescent tube break inside its sleeve above a cooling rack. The sleeve held most of the glass, but the end caps had split. The supervisor stopped the line, cordoned three metres around the rack and put 14 trays of open rolls on hold. The clean up team found two fragments on the floor beyond the rack, so the zone was widened and a further 6 trays were held. All 20 trays were scrapped. The root cause was sleeves without end caps on that row of lights; all were replaced within a week. The incident record, the hold tags and the disposal note were filed together, and when the certification auditor asked to see a glass incident, the whole story took five minutes to show.

Glass packaging lines: the extra controls

When the product itself goes into glass jars or bottles, breakage is a routine event and needs its own controls:

• specifications and supplier controls for the containers, with checks on delivery for damaged pallets;
• container cleaning before filling, such as inverting and rinsing or air blowing, according to your validated process;
• a defined response to a breakage at the filler or capper, including how many containers either side are removed and how filler heads are cleaned before restart;
• a breakage log for each line, so you can trend breakages by shift, supplier lot and machine setting;
• regular checks of guide rails, star wheels and transfer points that cause chipping.

The removal rules for a filler breakage should come from your own validation and risk assessment, not from a figure borrowed from another site. The Physical Contamination and Foreign Bodies Risk Assessment Template (RA15) helps you score glass alongside metal, hard plastic and other foreign bodies and justify the controls you choose.

What auditors ask about glass

Expect an auditor to test the system, not just read it. Common checks include:

• picking an item on the floor and asking to see it in the register;
• picking a line in the register and asking to see the item;
• asking for the last inspection records for a high risk area;
• asking an operator what they would do if a light broke above their line;
• opening the glass breakage kit to see whether it is complete;
• asking for a glass incident record and tracing it to the product hold and disposal.

Personal items count too. Your GMP rules should keep glass bottles, jars and personal glass items out of production, and say how prescription spectacles are managed. Our HACCP and GMP implementation consulting team can help set this up, and an internal food safety audit will test it before your certification body does. To train supervisors in the full set of GMP controls, our Implementation of Good Manufacturing Practices course covers the prerequisite programmes that sit behind controls like this one.

What to do this week

• Walk one production area and compare what you see with the register.
• Check every glass breakage kit on site is complete and sealed.
• Ask two operators to talk you through the breakage procedure.
• Review last month’s glass inspections for missed checks or unreplaced items.
• List glass items above open product that could be replaced or sleeved.
• Pull your last glass incident record and confirm it links to the hold and disposal records.