Each September we recognize the importance of food safety every day in our operations by celebrating National Food Safety Month. This year’s theme, The Future of Food Safety, emphasizes the changing environment in which foodservice operates. Each week of September has a unique focus:
Developing a culture of food safety is important for any foodservice operation. You may be wondering--just what is a culture of food safety? Let’s start talking about it by first defining what is meant by culture. When you look culture up in the dictionary, you will see terms such as shared knowledge, beliefs, values, attitudes, and meanings; a way of life; patterns of behavior; learned behavior of a group of people; and transmitted from generation to generation. I think these descriptors provide good insight into the meaning of a culture of food safety. You can also think about where you grew up, and a vision of culture comes. For example, I grew up in rural Oklahoma, graduating in the 1970’s with a class of 24 students. My culture instilled in me an appreciation for rural life, hard work, and independence. As I grow older, I realize I haven’t changed very much from my early years, even though I have completed a PhD, lived a lot of places, and traveled throughout the world!
In our last blog, I talked about general produce safety. Today, I want to talk about some special products—melons, tomatoes, leafy greens, and sprouts. These are all foods that have a history of bacterial contamination leading to foodborne illness. I also want to discuss salad bars because they have some special risks.
Hi Everyone – Cathy here. Having written the SafeFood Blog for Iowa State University for over ten years, I am happy to have the opportunity to work with FoodHandler in my retirement. Jeannie and I share with FoodHandler a passion for making sure food served is safe.
In our last blog, we talked about cross contamination, including the related risks and sources. Our focus today will be on some of the major strategies that can be used to mitigate cross contamination in a foodservice operation.
Cross contamination is a major risk factor contributing to foodborne illness, but there are steps that you can take in your foodservice operation to mitigate the risk. In this blog, we cover the basics of cross contamination, the risks that result, and sources of cross-contamination so that you can understand the serious risk it presents. In the next blog, strategies to lower this risk will be covered.
Meet FoodHandler's Food Safety Leadership Team:
We are pleased to announce that our new food safety consultants—Dr. Jeannie Sneed and Dr. Cathy Strohbehn—will be writing blogs twice each month, on the first and fifteenth. Their goal is to make these blogs relevant, and to continue conversations about food safety among foodservice operators. We invite you to contact them to ask questions, share success stories, make suggestions for blog topics, or provide other thoughts you have about food safety. You can email them at foodsafety@foodhandler.com
Blog by Lori Stephens based on the new FDA Food Code release.
1675 Robb Drive
Reno, NV 89523
Monday – Friday:
8:00 AM – 5:00 PM
1675 Robb Drive
Reno, NV 89523
Monday – Friday:
8:00 AM – 5:00 PM
© Copyright 2024 | FoodHandler Inc. | All Rights Reserved.
Site Design By Print Media Corporation
