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Temperature Control and Food Safe Training

Food Safety Training Review of Proper Temperature Control

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It’s September, and we’re in the midst of National Food Safety Month. National Food Safety Month gives us the opportunity to look at some of the most important rules that keep our food safe. It also gives restaurateurs and food service supervisors the chance to pass on the knowledge they’ve learned during food safe training to their customers.

Temperature Control and Food Safety Training

Before we talk about ways to introduce food safe cooking practices to your guests, it’s important to quickly review proper temperature control procedures. All food must spend as little time in the danger zone as possible. This means all hot foods must remain over 140 degrees and all chilled foods must remain below 41 degrees. Raw proteins and reheated foods must be fully cooked before serving.

  • Reheated cooked product: 165 degrees
  • Raw poultry: 165 degrees
  • Ground meats and pork: 155 degrees
  • Eggs that will be held: 155 degrees
  • Eggs for immediate service: 145 degrees
  • Beef, fish and game: 145 degrees

When we talk to people who have never worked in the food industry, we find some interesting misconceptions about how temperature affects food safety. Many people know the common pathogens that cause food-borne illness due to media coverage of outbreaks, but they don’t consider how their cooking habits at home can have the same consequences on a smaller scale. While food business operators are not responsible for how their patrons handle food at home, Food Safety Month offers a way to share food safe training practices with their guests.

Including an insert in your menu that explains what Food Safety Month is about is an easy way to pass on food safe training practices. Educating your patrons on proper cooking temperatures for proteins can give them an at home guide to doing it themselves. The Minnesota Food Code provides fact sheets that can be easily adapted to produce a simple instruction guide to enlighten your guests on this key food safety issue.

We think it’s a great idea to pass on food safety tips to those not in the industry. Do you have any ways that you educate your guests?

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?

The Top Food-Borne Illnesses and the ServSafe Food Manager

The Top Food-Borne Illnesses and the ServSafe Food Manager

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There have been several outbreaks of food-borne illnesses that received national attention in the past year, but are the pathogens that receive the most media attention the biggest culprits that sicken consumers? This week, we take a look back at the top causes of food-borne illness.

Common Food-Borne Illnesses and the ServSafe Food Manager

Now that the data from 2016 has been compiled, we’ve learned some interesting things about food-borne illness trends. The top four causes of illnesses in 2016 included:

  • Campylobacter
  • Salmonella
  • Shigella
  • E. coli

While Salmonella and E. coli dominate the news cycle whenever there an outbreak happens, the number one cause of food-borne illness generally goes unreported. Campylobacter causes fever, nausea and abdominal pain and most commonly effect small children and young adults. We hear very little about this bacterium because serious cases rarely happen and only a few long-term complications can occur. Although rare, some of the more serious cases of infection have been linked to appendicitis and arthritic-like symptoms. Campylobacter contaminates food that has come into contact with animal or human fecal matter and commonly comes from chicken and poultry products. It also exists on unwashed fruits and vegetables that grow where a chicken manure based fertilizer is used or food product that is handled by unclean hands.

Shigella bacterium sometimes causes serious symptoms and is closely related to dysentery. Studies show that as little as 100 ingested bacteria can lead to symptoms, making Shigella the easiest contracted food-borne illness when present in food. ServSafe food managers must train their staff diligently to prevent the spread of Shigella since severe cases can cause seizures, intense abdominal pain and a risk of death in the elderly and those with compromised immune systems. Proper hand washing reduces the risk of the spread of Shigella, and those that contract it should be aware that it spreads for weeks after symptoms have dissipated.

Modern data collection and the reporting of illness statistics gives us a wider view of health concerns that result from improper food handling. Are there any rarely covered issues that you’d like us to address in a future article?