Your Voice Matters: Why Food Producers and Sanitarians Are Essential to the Future of Hygienic Design

The Critical Need for Balanced Representation in Standards Development

Food producers and sanitarians stand at the frontlines of food safety, yet their voices are often underrepresented in the very standards that govern their daily operations. As 3-A SSI continues its century-long mission of safeguarding public health through rigorous equipment standards, we face a critical challenge: ensuring those who use and enforce these standards help create them.

Tara Schuelke, Portfolio Manager, Hilmar Cheese Co.

“3-A SSI’s working groups grow your connections with subject matter experts in the sanitary standards community across numerous industries and a range of participants from equipment manufacturers to regulatory and consumer product producers. The working groups support the professional development of participants, as participants are active contributors to the rationalization of each word in the standards. The working groups are a path for individuals to be subject matter experts themselves in sanitary design. It’s a key opportunity to participate in expectations for all of us as key stakeholders in sanitary industries to write our future expectations that we will deliver against to produce sanitary products for consumers”

What's Really in It for You? The Hidden Benefits of Volunteering

Beyond the altruistic goal of improving industry standards, joining a 3-A SSI Ad Hoc Working Group offers tangible professional advantages:

• Direct Your Industry's Future: Shape standards that will affect your operations before they're implemented

• Professional Recognition: Establish yourself as an industry expert and thought leader

• Problem-Solving Forum: Bring your real-world challenges to the table and collaborate on solutions

• Competitive Intelligence: Gain insights into emerging technologies and regulatory trends

• Networking: Build relationships with equipment manufacturers, regulatory officials, and fellow food safety professionals

Demystifying the Commitment: What Volunteering Actually Entails

Many potential volunteers hesitate due to uncertainty about the time and expertise required. Here's what you can expect as a volunteer Ad Hoc Working Group Member:

• Time Commitment: Most working groups meet virtually for 1-hour sessions, typically no more than once or twice per month depending on the scope of the project, with focused project timelines typically spanning 6 months for amendment proposals, 12 months for full revision proposals to individual equipment standards. New standards generally take longer to develop depending on the scope of the project.

• Expertise Needed: The standards projects are specifically tailored to industry equipment.   It is helpful for volunteers to be familiar with equipment operation, cleaning procedures, and regulatory compliance.  Each stakeholder’s vantage point is important to the standards development process.

• Support System: New volunteers receive orientation materials and are provided guidance on process and procedures by experienced Staff. 3-A SSI is in the exclusive position of being able to provide neutral guidance on fundamentals of hygienic design which have been standardized and provide minimum industry adopted requirements that are practical and easy to understand.

• Flexible Participation: Join as a voting member or as an observer.  Everyone is welcome to submit comments during open comment periods.  Voting members have the additional requirement to vote or and my chose to volunteer to serve as an Ad Hoc WG leadership role such as the Chair, Vice Chair, or Document Leader.

Current Projects Needing Your Voice

Right now, several critical standards that define commonly used processing equipment are under revision and open for your participation. Batch/continuous freezers, silo tanks, sensors, mechanical conveyors, and pasteurizer systems are assembling Ad Hoc Working Groups today. Your voice will directly impact food safety operations, and your practical insights are invaluable.

The upcoming revision to the 3-A Sanitary Standard for Batch and Continuous Freezers for Ice Cream (Project B-19-07-A), for example, will affect cleaning protocols and equipment design for frozen dessert production for years to come. Without input from those who operate and inspect this equipment daily, the standard risks becoming impractical or ineffective.

How Your Perspective Makes a Difference

As a food producer, you understand operational realities—what works on the plant floor, what cleaning procedures are practically feasible, and what design features create genuine efficiency.

As a sanitarian, you bring the critical regulatory perspective and real-world inspection experience that ensures standards truly protect public health while remaining implementable.

When these perspectives are missing from working groups, standards may include requirements that:

• Create unnecessary operational complications

• Are prohibitively expensive to implement

• Solve theoretical problems while missing practical ones

• Conflict with other operational requirements

• Create unintended consequences for cleaning or inspection

Getting Started Is Easier Than You Think

Joining a 3-A SSI Working Group involves a simple application process and is free to participate:

1. Review the current projects listed in this newsletter

2. Submit the Ad Hoc Working Group Application form. Contact Eric Schweitzer, Director of Standards & Certification, at erics@3-a.org with any questions.

3. Specify your interest in joining as a voting member or observer

From Participant to Leader: Growth Opportunities Within Working Groups

Working group participation isn't static—many volunteers discover opportunities for leadership as they gain experience. Members select their own Chairperson, Vice Chairperson, and Document Leader, providing pathways to greater industry recognition and influence.

Jedd Taylor, Senior Process Engineer, Leprino Foods Co.:

“Leprino Foods is taking an active role in 3-A SSI, Inc. for several reasons.  First, it is critical that the dairy industry continues to produce products that are safe and anything we can do to help with that is important to us.  Second, it gives us the opportunity to work side by side with industry and regulatory innovators and thought leaders so that our processes continue to get better with each build.  Third, we have a voice regarding relative standard importance and prioritization based on our vast experience in our plants"

The Next Generation of Hygienic Design Needs Your Expertise Now

For more than a century, 3-A SSI has safeguarded food safety through collaborative standards development. Today's challenges—increasing automation, energy efficiency, incorporation of new materials and processes, sustainability demands and evolving regulatory expectations—make your participation now more crucial than ever.

Will you help shape the next century of hygienic design? Your expertise isn't just valuable, it's essential.

Ready to make your mark on industry standards? Complete your application form and join a 3-A SSI Ad Hoc Working Group.