Food Safety Blog and CFPM Resource Hub

A Lesson in Improper Food Safety Training from South Africa

March 12, 2018/in ServSafe & NEHA Best Practices/by Christine Dantz

While we usually focus on food safety training in Minnesota and food-handling issues in the United States, the listeria outbreak in South Africa is too big of a news story to ignore. With a death toll around 200, this outbreak breaks records as the largest listeria case in the world.

A Food Safety Training Case Study and a South African Outbreak

Image Credit: mayushka

Investigators have traced the source of this outbreak to a South African processed meat product called polony. The listeria bacterium found on the exterior casing of this meat product poses an incredibly high probability that other products have also become contaminated. The risk of cross-contamination from this outbreak prompted health officials to recommend that the residents of South Africa avoid consuming any ready-to-eat processed meat products. Between January and March, nearly 700 cases of infection from this strain have been confirmed, and this outbreak has a staggering 27-percent fatality rate.

It’s vital that we don’t simply write this outbreak off as happening in another country because it doesn’t affect food producers in Minnesota and the United States. This product may never be sold in our stores, but it should serve as a dire warning as to the consequences of a lack of food safety training, especially with something as preventable as listeria poisoning. Now could be a good time to review hand washing and equipment sanitation procedures with your staff since many cases of listeria begin with improper sanitation procedures.

Have you been following this major food safety story and has it impacted how you look at basic food handling training?

Food Safety Certified Procedures for Produce

March 5, 2018/in ServSafe & NEHA Best Practices/by Christine Dantz

In ServSafe training, food safety certified professionals learn that washing raw fruits and vegetables before serving helps prevent the spread of food borne-illness. We all know that plants grow in the dirt, and dirt contains bacteria that can be harmful if consumed. Some farms utilize fertilizers and pesticides to yield a larger crop, and residues of these compounds may still exist on the surface of fruits and vegetables. We’d like to suggest that restaurants develop standards that require all produce to be washed before any use.

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Washing of Produce and Food Safety Certified Standards

Even if you plan to cook your fruits or vegetables, there may be a chance that pathogens on their surface can spread. During preparation, they will inevitably come into contact with knives, prep surfaces and hands that will then go on to touch other items in your kitchen.

Produce ingredients that often go unwashed include fruits and vegetables with peels or rinds. Some examples of these include:

Carrots, beets and other root vegetables
Avocados
Melons
Oranges, pineapples and other tree fruits
Thick-skinned squash such as pumpkins and butternut squash

During classes prepared for food safety certified managers, we’ve often been asked why we feel it’s necessary to wash these items before preparation; the customer will never eat the peels. Your knives and peelers can come into contact with contaminates on the surface of these ingredients and then become infected. The grooved surface of a cantaloupe, for example, contains many nooks and crevices for bacteria and remnants of fertilizer to reside. As you slice through the surface, your knife can pick up these microscopic particles and spread them to the meat of the fruit as your knife passes through. The same theory can be applied to a peeler that picks up contaminates while root vegetables are being prepared.

Washing all produce is just one small way to prevent food-borne illness, and should never be overlooked. Can you think of any small, but necessary, procedures you feel gets forgotten far too often.

Food Manager Training And When To Recall Products

February 26, 2018/0 Comments/in Certified Food Protection Manager Training/by Christine Dantz

Nothing completes a freshly toasted bagel like cream cheese, but in the month of January, Panera Bread customers had to settle for a substitute. After a sample from a single batch of one of their flavored cream cheeses tested positive for Listeria, Panera Bread made the decision to recall all cream cheese products in their restaurants, regardless of production date. This week, we’d like to explore Panera’s recent decision from a food manager training perspective. Bearing in mind their efforts to keep customers safe, especially considering the number of high-profile food-borne illness outbreaks we’ve seen over the past few years.

Recalls and Food Manager Training

Panera’s press release is very clear that only one batch of flavored cream cheese produced on a single date contained a tainted sample and that no cases of food poisoning have been reported. So was recalling product already shipped and produced on different dates really necessary?

When studying bacteria in food manager training classes, we learn that Listeria is a potentially deadly pathogen, especially to the elderly, children and those with weakened immune systems. Extreme caution should always be taken when there is even the remote possibility of releasing food tainted with Listeria into the food supply. In this current case, we support Panera Bread’s decision to exercise an abundance of caution. Even one unnecessary death from food poisoning is too many.

While only one batch tested positive, there is always the remote possibility that tainted product may have snuck its way into the restaurant chain’s distribution system. In a past blog, we explored the potential fiscal repercussions of ignoring food safety protocols. Taking aggressive steps when it comes to preventing food-borne illness not only makes a great deal of sense from a safety standpoint, but from a financial standpoint as well. While Panera may have decided to take a short term loss by disposing of more product than just the batch that had been confirmed contaminated, they may have saved themselves a massive loss in the long run with their caution.

We applaud Panera’s procedures in this case. Considering what you have learned during online food manager training courses and instructor led ServSafe classes, do you agree?

Spanish Online Food Safety Certification Courses

February 19, 2018/0 Comments/in Certified Food Protection Manager Training/by Christine Dantz

For a great number of innovative restaurateurs, food service managers and employees that work in food production, English is not their first spoken language. This often leads to challenges when it comes time to become food safety certified. Many courses are led by a talented instructor who may have a rudimentary knowledge of the Spanish language, but might not be fully able to converse with a native Spanish speaker. If you have a Spanish speaking employee in need of certification, a Spanish online food safety certification course can help them gain the knowledge they need and take the test in a familiar language.

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Benefits of Online Food Safety Certification Courses for Spanish Speakers

Even if a student has a good grip on the English language, they may be more comfortable studying in the language that comes naturally to them. There are certain nuances in both English and Spanish that could cause a teacher to have trouble explaining a concept to a Spanish speaker and have the student misunderstand the information. This can be especially true for food service workers who recently immigrated to the United States.

An online food safety certification course will also help by placing a non-English speaker in a comfortable environment. Online classes can be taken from the student’s home at their own pace. After the student has finished their online training, all that will be left for them is to register for a testing date. Many times this test must be taken at a specific location away from home where they have the advantage of taking it in their own language.

At Safe Food Training, we can set up online courses in both English and Spanish, as well as provide any specialized training you may require.