Food Safety Blog and CFPM Resource Hub

June 25, 2018June 5, 2018

Online Safe Food Training Guide to Fresh Seafood Storage

Frozen Fish Fish Sea Raw Healthy Seafood Market

With summer arriving, fresh seafood will soon available in abundance. Whether you’re bringing in fresh Atlantic salmon, live Maine lobster or halibut from the cold waters of Alaska, online safe food training training highlights that special steps should be taken when storing your fresh seafood to prevent cross contamination and keep it fresh for as long as possible.

Online Safe Food Training Guide to Fresh Seafood Storage — www.maxpixel.net/Frozen-Fish-Fish-Sea-Raw-Healthy-Seafood-Market-2987487

Seafood Storage and Online Safe Food Training

We learn in our online safe food training that proteins should be stored in order of lowest cooking temperature to highest, with those with the highest cooking temperatures on the lowest shelf. For a quick review, the following list shows proper cooking temperatures for common proteins:

Seafood: 145 degrees
Fresh beef steaks, pork chops and ham: 145 degrees
Ground beef and pork: 160 degrees
Poultry: 165 degrees

A quick glance at this chart shows that fresh seafood should be stored on the top shelf in your protein cooler. However, we suggest that seafood be stored in its own area in your refrigerator to prevent any potential cross contamination. Seafood allergies cause very severe reactions in those afflicted. Storing seafood over top of other proteins can pose a cross-contamination risk and inadvertently spread these allergens to other items on lower shelves.

It’s also important to take steps to keep your seafood fresh for as long as possible. We have a few tips to help you keep your fish and shellfish stored under the best possible conditions.

Keep your seafood covered while stored
Use ice bags, not loose ice to keep your seafood as cold as possible
Only pull as much seafood from refrigeration as needed for production

The soft flesh of fish dries easily and absorbs flavors of other items. Keeping seafood covered prevents this and helps it retain its unique texture and flavors. Ice melts under refrigeration, so it’s important to use ice bags when keeping seafood cold. If your fish soaks in the melted water, chances of bacteria breeding increases and the flesh becomes soft and spongy.

Finally, only pull as much product as you need out of cold storage. A constant change in temperature will degrade the quality of your seafood. Only stock your production lines with the product that you need rather than moving it on to the line and back into cold storage at the end of the day.

We love fresh fish. Are there any other steps you take to keep your seafood as fresh as possible?

June 18, 2018June 5, 2018

What Are The Duties Of A MN Certified Food Manager?

Whether you have the title of kitchen manager, executive chef or food and beverage supervisor, we know that you have a myriad of duties that require your constant attention. You write budgets, calculate food costs, hire staff and train employees. On top of that, are the duties of a MN certified food manager. The state has outlined very specific responsibilities that help you keep the food you serve safe.

On the Job Duties of a MN Certified Food Manager

Once you complete training and gain your food manager certificate, the Minnesota Department of Health requires you to perform the following duties:

Identify food safety hazards in your facility
Implement procedures to prevent food-borne illness
Perform food safety training and insure a person in charge (PIC) is present when food is prepared
Monitor food preparation and take action to correct procedures to protect the public from food-borne illness
Conduct inspections to ensure proper food handling occurs during regular operations

As a MN certified food manager, your obligations go beyond the day-to-day operations of your business, and you must keep the food your operation serves safe. Identification of hazards is your first step towards food safety, but you must act on your observations. Nearly every one of the requirements for food managers can be seen as a reaction to the hazards that you have identified.

Proper implementation of procedures goes a long way to preventing the spread of food-borne illness. The key to effective food-safety protocols include training, monitoring and a keeping written track record for reference. It does no good to simply train one or two employees and let your procedures spread from there. Take the time to train your entire staff on proper food-handling techniques, especially those that might be unique to your establishment and the type of product you serve or sell.

Finally, you must follow up on your identification and procedure implementation by monitoring day-to-day operations to ensure procedures are followed properly. Conducting periodic self-inspections of your facility is also a great tool to monitor how food is handled. Be thorough when you conduct your self-inspection. Act as if you were your local health inspector and check every aspect of your facility. Conduct a verbal review with your employees and make sure that any potential hazards are being dealt with properly.

Do you have any tips for keeping track of your duties of a MN certified food manager?

June 11, 2018June 5, 2018

Communication Between the ServSafe Food Manager and Staff

The ServSafe food manager’s duties cover many areas of their facility, and they need each member of their staff to understand their role and know what their daily tasks may be. Effective communication not only keeps your kitchen staff on the same page, it frees up your time by allowing you to go about your duties without constantly answering questions and covering the same material a multitude of times with different team members.

Effective Communication Tips for the ServSafe Food Manager

In our discussions with chefs, food preparation supervisors and other students who come to us for ServSafe food manager certification, we’ve found a few communication tools you may find helpful:

Daily log books
Printed task and daily goal sheets
Pre-shift staff meetings
Regular manager meetings
Periodic meetings with all staff members

We believe that having a written track record or goals and tasks it a great way to make sure that everyone knows what needs to be accomplished. The food industry moves at an incredibly fast pace, so relying on memory may not be the best solution. If just one of your staff members forgets an essential task, your well-oiled machine can quickly turn into a rusty locomotive careening towards disaster. This is where a log book documenting shortages, problems with the production line or areas that could use improvement comes in handy. Also, prep sheets, written par quotas and documented daily maintenance procedures will let your staff know what lies ahead with minimum interaction.

While written communication is fine for some situations, a recurring formal meeting of some kind can easily streamline your communication channels. This allows for all key employees to be in the same place at the same time, bring up issues, provide clarity between different aspects of your operation and make sure everyone is one the same page without confusion later.

These meetings can take different forms. An all-staff meeting may be necessary if new procedures are being introduced, if there are wide scale menu changes or if you feel the need for regular reinforcement of your company’s goals. Regular meetings with every employee in attendance may not work for larger businesses. In these cases, department heads, shift-supervisors or groups of managers can meet separately and then hold meetings with the employees under their direct supervision.

All too often, important information is disseminated in passing and can become forgotten or misunderstood. What communication techniques do you use to keep your team on the same page?

June 4, 2018June 5, 2018

Food Safety Certified Managers and Hot Air Hand Dryers

Food Safety Certified Managers & Hot Air Hand Dryers

Once touted as a convenient and sanitary aid in handwashing, touchless hot air hand dryers are in a multitude of public restrooms. However, during a recent study performed at the University of Connecticut, scientists discovered that hot-air hand dryers do more than remove water from your skin, they blast bacteria onto your hands and circulate fecal matter throughout the restroom.

Food Safety Certified Managers and Bacteria from Hand Dryers

Minnesota Food Code rules do allow for your facility to employ the use of heated hand dryers as long as they are not “the only device provided at the sink,” but given this current study, we think discussing the use of these devices in your kitchen or public restrooms would be prudent.

Touchless hand dryers provide a convenience for guests and save money on supplies by not wasting disposable paper towels, but is equipping restrooms with devices that actually cover users with invisible particles of fecal matter in the best interest of food safety?

To be on the safe side, we suggest you consider automated paper towel dispensers as a replacement for forced-air hand dryers. These provide the opportunity to procure a paper towel with a wave of the hand and avoid contact with a potentially contaminated surface.

Now may also be a good time to make sure that all of your restrooms are equipped with a current handwashing fact sheet.

It will be interesting to see how health departments and the food-service industry will react to this information in the future. Considering the results of this study, will you still be utilizing hot-air hand dryers in your restrooms?