LESSON 10: FOOD SAFETY/PERSONAL HYGIENE

Food safety is extremely important to prevent food-borne illnesses. When a business doesn’t practice food safety, it can lose customers and quickly can get a bad reputation.

It can also incur legal fees from lawsuits, which could lead to the business closing.

Cross Contamination

When germs from one food item are passed to another food item (usually raw food to ready-to-eat food) it is called cross contamination. Food-borne diseases are contracted by eating contaminated food. Three categories of these diseases include:

• Disease caused by parasites.
• Disease caused by micro-organisms that release toxins inside the gastrointestinal tract.
• Disease caused by consuming chemicals containing natural toxins.

Bacteria 

Bacteria are germs with only one cell that can multiply into large numbers when food is left in the danger zone for more than 4 hours.

Department sanitation is a vital link in keeping food safe.

• Customers judge the quality of your department based, in part, on its appearance.
• The department needs to be properly cleaned and sanitized to keep food safe.
  
  

Worker’s Personal Hygiene

Every employee should follow the personal hygiene schedule, starting at the beginning of their shift until the end.

• Double Handwash – Lather hands with soap and warm water for approximately 20 seconds, rinse, and repeat a second time. Dry hands with paper towel, air dryer or roll of linen towels.
• When you should wash your hands -- before a shift, after going to the restroom, after touching your face or hair, after taking out garbage, eating, smoking or touching money, before putting on gloves, after leaving and reentering a prep area, and after breaks.
• Hair Restraints - Includes hats, hair coverings or nets, beard restraints, and clothing that covers body hair that are designed to be worn to effectively keep hair from contacting exposed food, clean equipment, utensils, and linens, and unwrapped single-service and single-use articles
  
  

SAFE SERV Certified

Ensure that your employees are practicing good sanitation by having them take the Safe Serve online course, available for a fee from

https://www.servsafe.com

** Please make sure you use the proper link for your state.