A clean break is needed between groups of products for food protection regulators to consider produce as separate from other produce packed off the same line. Determining a clean break is important to limit the scope of a recall. Packers can determine lot size based on what is practical and the amount of risk that their business is comfortable with. Food protection regulators define lot size as when a clean break occurs before and after a group of products. For instance, if a packer chooses to have a daily documented and verified clean break, the packer would establish one lot per day, as defined by food protection regulators. In other situations, a packer may choose to have a clean break conducted weekly, meaning that a food safety incident could result in a week’s worth of production being recalled. This 2-page fact sheet was written by B. Chapman and M.D. Danyluk, and published by the UF Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, August 2013.
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fs234