The ServSafe Food Manager and Fall Pests

The ServSafe Food Manager and Fall Pests

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Fall brings the changing colors of the leaves to the great outdoors and the aroma of pumpkin spice food products to local restaurants and cafes. The colder temperatures and dying vegetation also brings an increased risk of certain types of pests that may pose a threat to the food prepared in local establishments.

The ServSafe Food Manager and Fall Pests

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and dinner plate

ServSafe Food Manger’s Guide to Fall Pest Control

During the fall season, certain rodents move to warmer habitats, and places where food is cooked can seem warm and inviting. To prevent rodents from seeking out your facility as a fall home, keep your dumpster and garbage areas clean. Rodents may be attracted to the smells outside of your building before making the attempt to move inside. It’s also a good time to take a close look at your dry storage inventory. ServSafe food managers should have a system in place to keep storage areas clean and product off of the floor to prevent rodents from gaining access to your food supply.

Fall also brings an increase in the beetle population. These insects can not only gain access to you facility from nearby areas, they can also be brought in with fresh produce deliveries. Keeping your property free of dying tree leaves and other natural matter will remove some of these insect’s available breeding grounds, and inspecting all fresh produce on arrival will stop them from infiltrating the rest of your fruits and vegetables.

Finally, if you do encounter rat droppings or notice an increase in insects inside your facility, your ServSafe food manager should consider consulting a pest expert that has experience in dealing with food production facilities. The unique nature of our business requires us to be careful to keep our product safe, and pest control can often involve substances that should never come into contact with food. While pests can cause problems, we want to be very careful not to compromise food safety while solving these kinds of dilemmas.

Now that we’ve discussed keeping fall pests away, we’d like to hear about the challenges your facility faces with the turning of the seasons. Leave your comments in the section below.

Food Safety Certification Minnesota and Receiving Procedures

Food Safety Certification Minnesota and Receiving Procedures

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In the food service industry, inventory control is a vital tool to keep waste down and control food costs. One of the key elements to proper inventory control occurs before you properly store items. Implementing effective receiving procedures ensures that you can use your product and reduce waste. It also keeps your product safe according to food safety certification regulations in Minnesota.

How to Properly Receive Food Shipments

Don’t delay shipment inspection.  Always check goods immediately on delivery. In fact, we suggest that you wait to sign for your deliveries until you have inspected the entire shipment. We know that this can be a hassle as deliveries can arrive at inconvenient times and drivers may be in a hurry to move on, but spotting damaged or contaminated goods right away reduces your risk of losing money by signing for unusable product.

Some signs that your food might be contaminated or damaged include:

  • Wet or torn boxes
  • Dented, rusty or bulging cans
  • Raw animal product stacked on top of ready to eat foods or produce
  • Chilled foods at improper temperature

Most indications of unusable product will be obvious. Cardboard boxes that are torn or soiled or sealed packages that have been opened obviously should not be accepted. Other signs may be harder to find and require detailed examination.

If your shipment contains products that require refrigeration such as dairy, proteins and frozen items, check the temperature of each product to ensure that it has remained out of the danger zone during delivery. Shipped product must follow food safety certification regulations, even during transport from a warehouse to your facility. Product shipped in the danger zone grows bacteria that can sicken your customers.

Canned goods often go unchecked, because many assume that canned goods are safe, no matter what the outside of the can looks like. A rusty can may indicate that it was stored under wet conditions. This can compromise the integrity of the metal and allow bacteria to grow on the surface of the can or potentially make its way inside. A bulging can indicates that the contents are contaminated, especially if you order canned meat products or ready to eat foods. To ensure the safety of your guests, you should never accept canned goods that are questionable.

Do you have receiving procedure in place for quality control purposes?

Food Training and Tracking a Food-Borne Illness Outbreak

Food Training and Tracking a Food-Borne Illness Outbreak

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As food safety professionals, we often play Monday morning quarterback whenever we read a news story about a major food-borne illness outbreak. We wonder what NFSRP standards were violated or if the certified food manager neglected some aspect of safe food training when bringing on new staff. Fortunately, the CDC tracks the vital statistics of an outbreak to bring a clearer picture of how they get started.

Food Training and Tracking a Food-Borne Illness Outbreak

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Food Training Guide to the Source of Food-Borne-Illness Outbreaks

One glaring statistic in the CDC’s collection of data that drew our attention is that 88-percent of outbreaks begin at a restaurant rather than a food packaging facility. This means that restaurant supervisors must implement quality food training methods that will enforce the importance of diligence in sanitation, prevention of cross contamination and proper temperature control. There is a very slim margin of error when it comes to keeping food safe, and in the fast paced atmosphere of a restaurant kitchen, the consequences multiply when food handling mistakes occur.

A second statistic that jumps out at us is the method of contamination. The top factors for food becoming contaminated are attributed to an employee handling food in some manner while infected with an illness. We think that this speaks volumes as to what a restaurant’s policy should be about working sick. Employees must not handle food while infectious.

The last statistic we’d like to point out is that over 45-percent of food poisoning outbreaks come from multi-ingredient dishes. Second and third place weren’t even close with vine vegetables at eight-percent and fish at seven-percent. There is no real trend to point to one protein or vegetable that is more likely to cause an outbreak than another. This means that all food needs to be handled with care, no matter what type of cuisine in on your menu.

If you’re a restaurateur, do these statistics surprise you? Let us know in the comments section.

Food Safety Month and the Certified Food Manager

Food Safety Month and the Certified Food Manager

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Every Certified food manager focuses on keeping the food they serve safe all year long, but the month of September has been set aside as National Food Safety Month in an effort to promote food safety beyond the walls of professional food service outlets. Since we aim to reduce the risk of food-borne illness, we fully support this idea of bringing attention to food safety and passing on the knowledge of our online food certification classes to those not in the food service industry.

Food Safety Month and the Certified Food Manager

How the Certified Food Manager Can Promote Food Safety to Patrons

Standards are already in place to teach your restaurant goers some safe food handling procedures. The current food code requires that you alert your guests to the dangers of consuming undercooked meat and eggs. This warning should exist somewhere on your menu if you serve dishes with these ingredients. But is there more that certified food managers can do to promote food safety outside of their establishments?

Most patrons don’t expect an exposé on bacteria or the side-effects of consuming tainted food before they eat, but there are simpler food-safety procedures that are easy to pass on to your guests, the easiest being the concept of proper handwashing.

We’re not suggesting that your host or server gives each customer a lecture about how to wash their hands before eating, there are subtler ways to get your diners in the habit of washing before they eat. If your staff simply lets each party know where your washroom is located, that should put the idea in your guests’ heads that they may wish to wash their hands.

Once in the washroom, a procedure chart for proper handwashing should be placed in a visible location. Make sure your chart states how effective handwashing prevents the spread of food-borne illness and how to properly wash after using the restroom.

Other ways to promote food-safety among your guests could be to have a list of the sanitation procedures that occur at each table visible somewhere in the dining room. This shows your customers the importance of cleaning eating areas regularly, and they might bring those habits home with them.

Certified food managers focus on keeping the food they serve safe all year long, but the month of September has been set aside as National Food Safety Month in an effort to promote food safety beyond the walls of professional food service outlets. Since we aim to reduce the risk of food-borne illness, we fully support this idea of bringing attention to food safety and passing on the knowledge of our online food certification classes to those not in the food service industry.

How the Certified Food Manager Can Promote Safe Food Safety to Patrons

Standards are already in place to teach your restaurant goers some safe food handling procedures. The current food code requires that you alert your guests to the dangers of consuming undercooked meat and eggs. This warning should exist somewhere on your menu if you serve dishes with these ingredients. But is there more that certified food managers can do to promote food safety outside of their establishments?

Most patrons don’t expect an exposé on bacteria or the side-effects of consuming tainted food before they eat, but there are simpler food-safety procedures that are easy to pass on to your guests, the easiest being the concept of proper handwashing.

We’re not suggesting that your host or server gives each customer a lecture about how to wash their hands before eating, there are subtler ways to get your diners in the habit of washing before they eat. If your staff simply lets each party know where your washroom is located, that should put the idea in your guests’ heads that they may wish to wash their hands.

Once in the washroom, a procedure chart for proper handwashing should be placed in a visible location. Make sure your chart states how effective handwashing prevents the spread of food-borne illness and how to properly wash after using the restroom.

Other ways to promote food-safety among your guests could be to have a list of the sanitation procedures that occur at each table visible somewhere in the dining room. This shows your customers the importance of cleaning eating areas regularly, and they might bring those habits home with them.

Does your establishment do anything special to enlighten your visitors on the importance of safe food handling practices?