FOOD SAFETY - HYGIENE As published in Convenience Store news.
The hygiene of personnel & premises is vital in maintaining food safety and customer confidence.
HYGIENE – PERSONNEL:
Personnel should be washing their hands many times during the day, but it is also very important to make sure that signs are up to let personnel know that that is what you expect & to jog their memory to do just that.
Training is often required to show people how to wash their hands. It is reported that 80% of the transfer of bacteria around a food business is on peoples hands. This transferring of bacteria can cause someone’s sickness or even death. If personnel are involved in food preparation where they deal with raw as well as cooked (ready to eat) food, it is very easy to contaminate the ready to eat food with bacteria from the raw product without thinking & cause illness of the person eating the ready to eat product. Eg: if you prepare chickens for cooking then slice some ham ready for the sandwich display without washing hands in between, if an elderly person or a child has a ham sandwich contaminated with the salmonella from the chicken earlier in the day, (yes every chicken has salmonella in it ) they could become very ill or even die. It is as easy as that & can be just as serious. This will mean you will be legally liable.
Most of us don’t have the time these days to make all of our own meals & therefore rely on many food handlers doing their job right.
Everyone from the manufacturer, to the transporter, distributor, retailer, preparer, etc, etc. has a duty of care .
Gloves:
The most important thing is that the food is protected. Personnel must also be trained that the protective clothing (hair nets, gloves, aprons, etc) are to protect the food from us. Not as is usually thought – the gloves to keep your hands clean, or aprons to keep your cloths clean while preparing food!!
Jewelery:
HYGIENE – PREMISES:
Cleaning must be done often – to make sure that food scraps do not contaminate surfaces & then good food & do not attract pests.
Chemicals required are:
1. Detergent (to dissolve grease & remove dirt),
2. Sanitiser (to kill bacteria - to reduce the number of bacteria on surfaces to a safe level after the detergent has been used & rinsed away),
3. Handwash (antibacterial is often a good idea).
The detergent & sanitiser should be AQIS approved to make sure that they are appropriate for use in a food premises.
If cleaning is not done correctly, enough bacteria can be left on surfaces (like cutting boards, work benches, between tiles on walls, etc) to contaminate food next time it comes in contact with that same surface.
Cleaning up:
Wash the area/item with hot water & detergent. Cold water will not clean properly. Rinse all the detergent, dissolved grease, food particles, etc away with more hot water. Then use the sanitiser to kill the bacteria.
All of the chemicals should be used in the dilution rates and methods as specified by the manufacturers so that they do their jobs effectively.
Surface swab kits are available to be able to check that surfaces are being cleaned properly. It is a good idea to check areas by using these ‘say’ once a month.
These simple, common sense procedures can be your only "evidence" of compliance to the laws.
Some articles to come:
Your suppliers.
Customer perception.
Protecting yourself.
Putting it altogether.
Article from:
Len Wallace
Food Safety Consultants
PO Box 6781
BAULKHAM HILLS BC
NSW 2153
(Registered Food Safety System Facilitators with the Quality Society of Australasia)
Ph: 1800 500 160
Fax: (02) 4572 8703
Scrape down all of the foreign matter – bits of food, bone, fat, plastic, cardboard, etc. It is very difficult to wash hands & wrists effectively (removing all the dirt, etc) while wearing rings, watches, & bangles. If people are working with food, they must realise that all of these items harbour huge amounts of bacteria, dirt, dead skin, and much more. Jewelery must be kept to a minimum. There is always great controversy over whether or not to wear gloves. If they are to be used, the food handlers need to be taught how to put them on, that they still need to wash their hands before putting them on, & how to make sure that they don’t contaminate them (eg: by picking items up off the floor during food preparation). The FSANZ food standards are ‘outcome’ based, which means that they say that the food handler MUST NOT contaminate the food. This must therefore be done in the best method for the food business. If it means that wearing gloves is best, then that is the way. The same with hair covering. If the bast way to protect the food is by wearing hair nets – then do so.
