These standards cover the sanitary aspects of unitized equipment for holding, opening, forming, dispensing, filling, closing, sealing, or capping containers for viscous products, or wrapping viscous products, and all parts essential to these functions. The equipment shall perform one or more of the following functions:
1. Holding the container preparatory to further processing
2. Opening the container
3. Forming the container
4. Dispensing a preformed container
5. Applying and sealing a supplementary fitment
6. Other processing equipment, as defined herein
7. Filling the container
8. Closing the container
9. Sealing the container
10. Capping the container
11. Wrapping the container
12. Applying a tamper-evident security seal.
The equipment shall start at the point(s) where the product, container, container blank, container material or wrapping material first enters the equipment. The equipment shall end where the packaged product exits the unitized equipment.
These standards do not pertain to the container, to free-standing container forming equipment or to other equipment such as labelers, printers, daters, cappers, applicators of supplementary fitments or devices or wrappers not furnished as part of the unitized equipment, nor shall it apply to fillers of nonviscous products.
In order to conform to these 3-A Sanitary Standards, equipment for packaging viscous products shall conform to the following design, material, and fabrication criteria and the applicable documents referenced herein.
