- Published 16 Jul 2024
- Last Modified 16 Jul 2024
7 min

PPE in the Food and Beverage Industry

Producing food and beverages that are safe to consume requires keeping the industry’s workers safe. Learn about the types of food and beverage industry PPE and the regulations governing them.

Reviewed by David Carmichael, Solution Engineer (June 2024)

Producing food and beverages at the mass-market scale requires careful attention to safety, both for the industry’s workers and its products’ consumers. Food production PPE (personal protective equipment) is indispensable for preventing food workers and food products from exchanging their contaminants. Food and beverage industry PPE covers all parts of the body and protects against a variety of hazards to allow workers to continually deliver safe food to the world.

Importance of PPE in the Food and Beverage Industry

Worker Safety

PPE in food industry settings must protect workers from a host of hazards:

Biological hazards: Bacteria, mould spores, and foodborne illness pathogens
Respiratory concerns: Allergens and food dusts (like flour)
Chemicals: Industrial cleaning chemicals are another important tool for ensuring food safety. Anyone using these to keep tools and surfaces clean will need chemically protective PPE
Fires and hot surfaces: The high heats of cooking foods require careful navigation around heat sources
Sharp objects: Knives and sharp tools are constant dangers, especially given the fast rates of food production
Slippery surfaces: The liquids producing beverages and some foods always have the potential to spill. Food production also requires regularly spraying down food production equipment
Noise: Food production can produce loud, constant noise, requiring ear protection

Customer Safety

Foods and beverages must be safe to consume. They must have their contaminants cooked and cleaned away and not receive new contamination. This means zero tolerance for salmonella, E. coli, Hepatitis A, and misplaced allergens.

Food safety PPE for food industry workers prevents contaminants in their hands, breath, clothing, and hair from entering the foods they work with. It also helps prevent cross-contamination between foods by ensuring workers pick up bacteria and germs only on things like gloves and aprons, which they promptly dispose of. Food industry PPE must be rated for containing the contaminants it will see.

Product Quality

Along with protecting workers and consumers from adverse health effects, food production PPE also plays a role in food quality. Contaminants affect food shelf life, texture, taste, and appearance. Safety PPE for beverage industry workers is vital since contaminants in things like beer production can ruin the chemical reactions driving the end product’s state. Additionally, while they may not be truly harmful, hairs appearing in food can be disastrous for a company’s brand and reputation.

PPE Safety Standards in the Food and Beverage Industry

Given the seriousness of food safety, it’s regulated tightly. Food production PPE falls under the following UK regulations.

All workplace PPE falls under the Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations of 2022. Employers always have a duty to provide their workers with the necessary PPE to stay safe on the job and the training for using the PPE. This also applies to limb workers - workers who are not full employees. The latest regulations newly include limb workers performing contract service work without an employment contract.

General food safety responsibilities require carefully managing materials that contact food, and this includes food industry workwear. A Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) plan is essential for identifying your food safety hazards and mitigating them through controls like PPE. This requires ongoing checks and documentation of your hazard control effectiveness. Health inspectors may want to see these records.

The Food Standards Agency’s guidance on personal hygiene states that any food and beverage industry workwear must be suitable, clean, and protective for the work. Also, food workers must tie back and cover their hair and remove most jewellery.

PPE Types in the Food and Beverage Industry

Hand Protection

Gloves are the quintessential food safety PPE for food industry workers since their hands directly contact foods. Varied gloves exist to protect against the equally varied hazards to the hands:

Bacteria and foodborne illnesses
Cuts
High cooking temperatures
Low temperatures (from frozen food)
Chemicals for sanitation

As for glove materials, latex is biodegradable and comfortable but contains allergens. Nitrile has good chemical and puncture resistance and no allergens but is less flexible. Vinyl gloves are a cost-effective, allergen-free alternative to latex ones, though they are not chemically resistant.

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Eye and Face Protection

Safety glasses and goggles protect against hazards like:

Hot liquid splashes
Dust from flour and other powders
Chemical splashes
Fragments from bone-cutting
General hazards of rotating machinery

Safety goggles give complete protection around the eyes, while safety glasses allow more airflow and comfort. Always ensure your eye protection guards against your hazards, though. Going further, face shields give complete and comfortable coverage when there are many hazards to the face present.

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Ear Protection

Particularly noisy branches of food production are animal slaughter and the production of beet sugar, breakfast cereals, and frozen fruits. Any work with noise levels above 85 dB requires hearing protection like earplugs, though extreme noises require noise-cancelling earmuffs.

Hearing PPE in food industry environments must not contaminate food, though. Tethered earplugs help with their tendency to pop out if not inserted correctly, and metal-detectable earplugs (with embedded ball bearings) allow food production lines to detect meat that earplugs have fallen into.

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Head and Hair Protection

Hair nets keep hairs, loose skin, and other head-based contaminants from entering foods. They also protect against workers contaminating their hands by randomly touching their hair. RS carries disposable and reusable hair nets, as well as beard masks. Hair nets can be metal-detectable to guard against them dropping into foods.

Use hard hats in the presence of heavier loads like in meat packing, though hard hats are always a good choice for industrial work in general.

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Respiratory Protection

Face masks are an essential form of two-way protection, keeping workers from spreading illnesses through foods and protecting against airborne pathogens, fumes, and dust. Face masks come in varying materials and ply tiers. 1- and 2-ply masks are common for food production PPE, while 3- and 4-ply are meant more for medical industries.

Respirators can be required for filtration against mould or extreme dust and fumes. They also last much longer than face masks and hold up better in rougher work, though they’re more expensive.

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Foot Protection

Safety footwear in the food industry includes overshoes and safety boots. They must give resistance against some or all of:

Spills: Hot fluids from food preparation and the industry’s industrial cleaning chemicals can spill onto and injure feet
Impacts: Carcasses or cookware can drop at any time
Punctures: Sharp objects like knives can fall onto feet
Slips: Spills can cause slips, trips, and falls. Workers may also need spill protection in normally wet environments like spraying down equipment

Slip protection doesn’t stop at PPE. Consider slip-resistant walkways for wherever you identify slip hazards.

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Body Protection

Aprons complete the protective envelope of food safety PPE for food industry workers. They protect against chemical spills and hot fluids and keep contaminants like lint from entering foods. Aprons have varying levels of body protection. For instance, we stock waist, full-body, and sleeved aprons, and either reusable or disposable aprons.

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Remember that food industry workwear must be comfortable and cost-effective in addition to being protective. RS can equip you with all the PPE you need to keep your workers and customers safe and satisfied.