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.
Handling Leafy Green Salad
We have had several produce outbreaks of foodborne disease from our lettuce, spinach, and other greens in the last several years that have been devastating to the produce growers and distributors, retail grocery stores, restaurants, and consumers.
Food Packaging Safety in a Vacuum
Extending the shelf life of fresh foods has come a long way in the food industry since curing meats with salt and sugar or canning vegetables with heat processing. The food service and consumer markets needed some better visual packages to draw the eye to the freshness factor and the technology of food packaging has filled our dinner plate. Vacuum packaging and modified atmosphere packaging, shortened to “MAP”, are the terms used for the method of food packaging used every time we choose convenience over more complex scratch meal preparation. According to industry statistics, billions of packages of vacuum and MAP-packaged foods flood the marketplace today. In both modified-atmosphere and vacuum packaging, food is packaged in a pouch made of barrier film.
The Eleven Commandments of Food Safety at Your Restaurant
Lists help us remember all kinds of information. Given the list of recent national foodborne outbreaks in the news, keep repeating this list to your food service team. They are kind of like “commandments”. As a professional in a food service facility we should think of the very basic food safety concepts that every crew member should aspire to learn, even though this list may have different priorities based on your menu. The first 3 apply to anyone who serves food, from a bag of popcorn to a full course meal. As chefs or managers, if we can “set the example” by repeating good food safety practices visibly to the crew, it will help them understand how important it is to the success of your facility. Thou shalt:
The Worst Customer Complaint: Foodborne Illness
Food service managers and crew try to follow the rules of food protection. Yet, occasionally a complaint may arise and these calls take priority over all other daily crises. If you have been in the food service industry long enough, you may have gotten one of these. A customer may claim, "I think your food made me ill." These words inflict instant anxiety. If it happens, here are some next steps to think about in advance of such a claim:
