Document Library

‍This session covers key design features, fabrication techniques, and 3-A Sanitary Standards provisions that enhance cleanability, prevent contamination, and ensure food safety. Gain practical strategies to achieve compliance and optimize operational hygiene.

This session focuses on developing and implementing specifications that meet 3-A Sanitary Standards and using inspection techniques to verify compliance. It provides actionable insights to ensure equipment meets hygiene and operational requirements.

This session will explore how to look at weldments and/or surface finishes that conform with 3-A Sanitary Standards. Main topics include inspecting examples of undercut, underfill, too much build up, too much penetration, lack of penetration, heavy grain, gouges, and other factors. We will go from the start of the fabrication/welding process to help you understand why these types of mistakes happen throughout the fabrication/welding process and how to prevent them. Examples will cover welding and polishing of sheet and tubing, the use of purge welding and orbital welding.

This session examines the relationship between surface roughness, cleanability, and corrosion resistance, as well as techniques for achieving optimal finishes defined in 3-A Sanitary Standards. Participants will gain an understanding of the challenges and nuances of finishing stainless steel and the 3M process step solutions used to meet the high standards and regulatory requirements for a 32 Ra surface finish.

In food processing and filling equipment, many individual parts must be connected to create a functioning unit. All connections with contact to food products or processing fluids must be sealed hygienically against leakage from the inside to the outside and to form a barrier against the environment and potential contaminants. This presentation will cover the key requirements for those connections as they are described in the 3-A Sanitary Standard for General Requirements. It follows the trail of the standard, starting with requirements for polymeric materials including legal requirements and provides examples of rubber materials and their key properties. The presentation moves on to the design requirements and concludes with some aspects of gasket maintenance.

Explore the critical role of materials of construction and surface finishes in hygienic food processing equipment. This session delves into material selection, corrosion resistance, durability, and the impact of surface finishes on cleanability and food safety.

As the 3-A TPV program enters its twentieth year of operation, it is important that the program clarify how to address various situations which have become more common with the consolidation of the equipment manufacturing industry. The following scenarios were not contemplated by the original authors of the 3-A TPV Manual for a 3-A Symbol Authorization under the TPV program back in 1999 – 2001. This CCE Bulletin is intended to provide information to CCEs on how to address these situations.

This Authorization Agreement is entered into by and between 3-A Sanitary Standards, Inc. and the Applicant.

This guidance document provides a framework for the development of equipment-specific “B Level” 3-A Sanitary Standards or 3-A Accepted Practices and describes the sanitary concepts found in a 3-A Sanitary Standard or Accepted Practice. 3-A Sanitary Standards or 3-A Accepted Practices do not cover machine safety, cost, efficiency, or any other non-sanitary considerations.

This 2024 annual report covers 3-A's operations during 2023.