By sector / Butchers & fishmongers
Behind a meat or fish counter there is little airborne grease. The deep clean is driven by something else: raw-protein cross-contamination, cold rooms and hidden debris.
Priority reversed
In a fryer-led kitchen the headline risk is grease in the extract. Behind a meat or fish counter there is little airborne grease, because the food is mostly raw rather than cooked.
So the deep clean is driven by something else entirely: stopping raw-protein cross-contamination, and dealing with the cold rooms, drainage and the blood, scale and bone debris that ordinary wiping leaves behind. The extract may barely feature; the biology is the whole job.
Separation is the principle
The FSA's cross-contamination guidance for meat handlers is built on one principle - complete separation of raw food from ready-to-eat, in space or in time. That shapes the clean: separate boards, surfaces and often separate rooms, with a cleaning sequence that never carries contamination from a raw area into a clean one.
Cutting rooms run cold - offal at 3°C or below, other red meat at 7°C, white meat at 4°C, with an ambient no warmer than 12°C - and tools are disinfected in hot water at no less than 82°C. A deep clean has to work with those disciplines, following the same one-way logic from clean to dirty, not cutting across them.
Where the problems hide
The walk-in is where trouble concentrates: condensation, ice build-up, door seals and the ceiling directly above the prep area. One fishmonger inspection condemned over 200kg of fish after ice and poor cold-room condition next to the food. Fish leaves scale, slime and brine; butchery leaves blood, fat, sinew and fine bone dust off the band saw.
All of it collects in floor drainage, wall and ceiling junctions, under equipment and inside display counters - and food-hygiene law requires drainage to flow from clean areas to dirty, never the reverse. A deep clean strips those hidden reservoirs that a daily wipe-down never reaches, which is precisely where an EHO looks.
What the clean fixes
A butchery or fishmonger deep clean decontaminates the cold rooms, drainage, wall and ceiling junctions, display units and the debris traps under equipment - the biological load, not a grease film. Any hot counter, rotisserie or cooked-meat line does add extraction that is cleaned to TR19 as normal.
What the clean cannot supply is the daily separation discipline the EHO scores: raw and ready-to-eat kept apart in space or time, the cutting-room temperatures held, and tools disinfected at 82°C. The clean resets the room; the routine is what keeps it safe between visits.
Questions
Only where there is cooking - a hot counter, rotisserie or cooked-meat line - which loads a canopy and duct that is cleaned to TR19. The raw counter's real risk is contamination, not grease.
Cross-contamination between raw protein and ready-to-eat food. The FSA's rule is complete separation in space or time, and it drives how the area is laid out and how it is cleaned.
They concentrate condensation, ice, seal damage and debris right beside food - a common inspection failure. The walk-in, its drainage and the ceiling above prep get particular attention.
Offal at 3°C or below, other red meat at 7°C and white meat at 4°C, with an ambient no warmer than 12°C; tools are disinfected in water at 82°C or above.
Yes - floor drains, channels and gullies are a debris and odour reservoir, and food-hygiene law requires flow to run from clean areas to dirty, so drainage is part of the deep clean.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
We decontaminate cold rooms, drainage, counters and the debris traps a daily wipe misses - and clean any hot-counter extraction to TR19. Tell us your layout.