Contamination of Food: Let’s Get Physical
Earlier this month, we began a discussion about contamination of food. Our first blog focused on chemical contamination, but in this blog, I’d like to look at physical contamination of food.
Any item which does not belong in the food product can be considered a physical contaminate, a hair, a piece of plastic or metal, or even a fake fingernail. While some physical contaminants, such as a piece of hair in your food may only be disgusting, other physical contaminants can cause serious injury to the consumer, including lacerations to the mouth and intestines, broken teeth, or can pose a serious choking hazard
When food arrives at your foodservice facility and throughout production, it is vital that you have strong controls in place to maintain the integrity of the food, limiting chances for inadvertent contamination of physical objects.
Physical hazards were not something I generally had to deal with when I was in operations, I imagine the same can be said for many of you. I do recall one incident when we had a chicken salad sandwich returned by a customer, who found a red acrylic fingernail in their chicken salad. When we surveyed the staff that day, we found that the salad, which was a prepackaged product, was opened that morning and none of our staff had on fake fingernails. Meaning the product had to come from the manufacturer. Luckily, the acrylic fingernail only caused disgust and no serious injuries.
While food companies work exceedingly hard to keep their products free from physical contaminants, it does occasionally occur. In 2021 and through January of 2021, 14 food recalls were issued in the United States due to foreign objects in food, including metal, plastic, glass, and small stones.
When food arrives at your foodservice facility and throughout production, it is vital that you have strong controls in place to maintain the integrity of the food, limiting chances for inadvertent contamination of physical objects. Here are four tips to help you in achieving this goal:
- Establish and monitor dress control policies, such as requiring employees to remove jewelry and wearing a hair restraint while in food production.
- Practice preventative maintenance on production equipment and repair or replace damaged equipment and parts immediately.
- Encourage employees to report any issues with equipment to supervisors and be sure to follow-through with corrective action. Not doing such will just cause employees to ask why they are reporting things when nothing ever gets fixed.
- Work with a reputable pest control company who works with you and your employees in establishing a solid and effective pest control program.
Underpinning all of these is to be sure you create and sustain a culture of food safety throughout your organization. Managers and all staff should know that nothing is so important that it cannot be done with food safety in mind. Check out our previous blog on developing this culture to make sure you operation is on the right path. Risk Nothing.
Greens & Spinach – Please Lettuce Be Safe to Eat
According to the new food nutrition pyramid, we are to eat at a minimum, around 3 cups of dark green vegetables along with other servings of fruits and vegetables each week. That is becoming more difficult as outbreaks such as E. coli 0157:H7 creates bad news for the produce industry, not to mention the victims.
Refrigeration Tips to Keep Your Food Safe
A refrigerator is one of the most important pieces of kitchen equipment for keeping foods safe. In a food service environment, our existence depends on the cooling equipment. The science of refrigeration has evolved from prehistoric times when man found his wild game would last longer packed in the coolness of a cave or packed in snow. Our ancestors harvested ice to keep food cold. Now, if the power goes off, we are instantly reminded of the refrigerator’s importance to our daily life, at home and certainly in a food service facility.
Food Service Hand Hygiene: Basic Handwashing – Part II
Ignoring handwashing as a priority is easy until faced with a crippling lawsuit. Your risk of transmitting a foodborne disease via a food workers hands will never be zero, but the good news is training your crew about handwashing is not complicated. Molding behavior to do it at the right time, using the correct method is the tough part. The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention says the single most effective way to stop the spread of infection is through handwashing. Last month’s article was on the physical equipment to help get better handwashing compliance. The most important part is the practice of the basic handwashing steps:
