Food Safety Blog and CFPM Resource Hub

January 21, 2019January 3, 2019

Identifying Future ServSafe Food Managers

staff giving thumbs up to future Servsafe food managers

The busy holiday season has ended, and down time in January provides the perfect opportunity to assess the talent in your organization. During this assessment, taking note of potential leaders on staff prepares you for the future and gives you a chance to offer training to key members interested in becoming a future ServSafe food manager. It also allows you to identify weak spots or gaps in employee training.

Future ServSafe Food Managers and Talent Assessment

Before you begin any talent assessment, it’s important to remember that any assessment based on finding weaknesses may be detrimental to your staff’s moral. Weaknesses and training gaps are important to identify and correct, but nobody likes to be constantly told what aspects of their job need improving. Focusing on identifying the positives and encouraging beneficial traits greatly impacts the effectiveness of your employees and the success of your business.

While you’re in the process of looking at your staff’s strengths, now’s the time to sit down with key members that have the ability to take on bigger roles. Run through all of the things you’ve noticed in their performance and discuss the possibilities of taking some extra training and possibly becoming one of your future ServSafe food managers. If this is something that appeals to them, point them in the direction of online food manager training or check out the schedule of upcoming instructor-led classes. It would also be a good idea to schedule some time for interested employees to shadow your current food safety manager so that they have an idea of what to expect if they agree to take on more responsibility.

We realize that not every facility has the budget for multiple certified food protection managers, but providing food safety training to exceptional staff will always be beneficial in the long run. Do you take the time to assess your staff’s talents and strengths from time to time?

January 14, 2019January 11, 2019

How the Government Shutdown Creates Food Safety Challenges

It’s been one of the biggest news stories of the past couple of weeks. The government has been shut down while the President and Congress try to hammer out a budget deal. As a result of this shutdown, thousands of government employees have been furloughed and certain agencies no longer have the funding to operate. At Food Safety Training, we usually keep our noses out of politics, but in this case, the shutdown has created challenges to keeping the food we serve safe.

Food Safety Challenges During a Government Shutdown

According to several reports, the FDA has lost funding due to the current shutdown. This means that many of the routine inspections that occur on a daily basis have ceased, and products from uninspected facilities are making their way onto grocery shelves and into the food supply used by restaurants and other industrial kitchens.

The FDA employs in the neighborhood of 5,000 inspectors and runs nearly 160 inspections per month. Those are inspections that are currently not happening. So what can certified food managers do to ensure their product is safe?

Inspect all ingredients for potential food safety hazards
Wash all produce
Cook all meats to the proper temperature
Take steps to train all staff on proper food handling procedures

The news isn’t all doom and gloom, however. While the FDA inspection process may have halted, there is still some measure of food safety control. USDA inspections of meat and some egg producers are still occurring as scheduled, the CDC is still funded in the event an agency needs to step in during a food-borne illness outbreak and foreign food inspections on products that are imported to the United States has continued. There is also speculation that the FDA may be preparing to resume inspections on facilities that produce high-risk products.

Besides governmental oversight, many of the largest food manufacturers employ their own inspectors to keep the food that leaves their facilities safe. It’s always in a company’s best interest to make sure their product will not sicken their customers, and while some food hazards slip through the cracks, many food producers have their own checks outside of government inspection.

Are there any food safety challenges that you see as a result of the government shutdown?

January 7, 2019December 19, 2019

Food Safety Standards for Automated Restaurants

It may sound like we’re pulling this story out of an episode of the Jetson’s, but the future is here and automated mobile restaurants are starting becoming a reality. That got us to thinking, in the absence of employees and ServSafe food managers that have completed food safety courses, how exactly will we know if the food safety standards are being maintained in future automated restaurants?

Food Safety Standards and the Future of Restaurant Automation

While current examples of automated restaurants appear to be types of juice and smoothie bars, it’s not too hard to fathom that technology will eventually provide opportunities for automation to serve more complicated dishes that require storing and cooking raw foods.

While the Minnesota food code doesn’t currently contain a section regarding robot chefs, we’d have to speculate that much more than the cooking process would have to be automated. Sanitation procedures would have to be closely followed, and we feel those procedures should at least be moderated and supervised by a living, breathing human being. Here are just some procedures we feel would have to be monitored by a ServSafe food manager:

Hot and Cold Holding Temperatures
Sanitation of Cooking Utensils
Temperatures of Finished Product
Quality of Raw Ingredients

As we all know, machinery can malfunction and even our computers freeze up from time to time. Without human observation, who’s to say that a robotic restaurant hasn’t had some sort of memory failure? If storage temperatures drop for hot-held foods or refrigeration fails, will an automated system have fail-proof safeguards for preventing customers from receiving tainted product?

Another major issue we see with automation is the quality of product. Not all products store for the same duration of time, and there can be product that may be spoiled or damaged that an organic chef can spot that robotic system won’t be programmed to assess.

While the Foodarackacycle may be several decades off, the foodservice industry and ServSafe food managers will have to adjust as automation becomes more and more prevalent.

How do you feel about the concept of maintaining food safety standards for automated restaurants without on-site human monitoring?

January 2, 2019January 2, 2019

A Quick Resource Guide to the New Minnesota Food Code

The new Minnesota Food Code take effect January 1, 2019.Over the past few months, we’ve covered many of these new changes, and this week we’d like to give food safety managers a quick resource guide to some of the most important changes in the code.

A Food Safety Manager’s Resource Guide to the New Minnesota Food Code Changes

It’s been 20 years since the last revision of the Minnesota Food Code, and we feel a lot of these changes are for the better. Here are some of the top changes that we’ve covered over the past few months:

The first change we’ll highlight is the change to the Certified Food Manager’s title. The Certified Food Manager will now be known as the Certified Food Protection Manager. This change was made in order to clarify the types of business require a CFPM.

Your handwashing stations will now no longer be required to have a nail brush available. The new regulations also outline other changes to handwashing stations including the use or air dryers and required signage.

Sanitation and having a documented plan for certain instances is now required. Going forward, you must have a documented plan for vomit and diarrhea cleanup.

There are new equipment standards in the updated food code that make it easier for food safety managers to choose which equipment to purchase for their kitchen.

Temperature control is a big part of food safety, and the current code now restricts the use of the standard probe thermometer for certain foods in favor of a small-diameter probe.

Speaking of temperatures, you will now be required to monitor the water temperature or your dishwashing machine.

The new code also addresses obtaining wild mushrooms from verified sources. Food safety managers must now source their mushrooms from registered providers.

The writers of the food code have taken the time to address certain unique situations. New sections have been added to code to include regulations for non-continuous cooking, reusable takeout containers and food preparation for susceptible groups.

Go ahead and bookmark this page for quick reference whenever you need it. At Safe Food Training, we’ll continue to update any new changes and how they affect food safety managers in Minnesota.