Emergency Preparedness and Responding to a Disaster with Food Safety in Mind

As I write the first blog this month, the realities of the devastation in Florida are coming to light as we also deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona, which impacted Puerto Rico late in September. Recent news has been focused on the recovery efforts for all who have been impacted. Thus, I thought it would be fitting this month to discuss emergency disaster planning resources in our first blog and delve into recovering from a disaster in our second blog later this month.

We’ve certainly discussed being prepared for disasters in previous blogs, but times like this can be a great reminder to update your emergency plan or begin to get your plan on paper if you haven’t already.

The simple fact is that if you are in business long enough, you WILL be impacted by an emergency or disaster. It is only a question of when it will happen.  These situations, even if they do not disrupt your operation, can certainly make serving food in a safe manner challenging.  Further, some of our businesses, especially schools and healthcare operations, must continue feeding and do not always have the ability to close during emergency situations.  Thus, having a solid plan is imperative to protecting our guests, students, and/or patients.

…your plan should be developed with your operation, your employees, and your area of the country in mind.

Power outages, lack of potable water, flooding, sewage backups, and fires are all issues that might impact any of us. Giving each of these situations some thought ahead of time alleviates the confusion and simple mistakes that can be made if you are responding ‘on-the-fly’ to these types of situations. As Benjamin Franklin once said, “if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail,” and those words can certainly ring true in emergency planning.

If you are new to emergency planning and/or haven’t given much thought to your emergency plan in recent years, start today!  Each foodservice business is unique, so it is important that you develop a plan for YOUR operation. Yes, there are many resources available on the topic from which you can start, but don’t just download one and call it good. These resources will give you some things to think about that may not have crossed your mind previously.  But your plan should be developed with your operation, your employees, and your area of the country in mind.

Here are a few resources to checkout:

  • Emergency Action Plan for Retail Food Establishments
    • An in-depth resource developed by the Emergency Preparedness Committee of the Conference for Food Protection with a very detailed guide that will provide you with lots of details from the food code on how to develop your plan.
  • Food Safety Emergency Response Pocket Guide: Disaster Edition.
    • Developed by the United States Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service Office of Food Safety and the Institute of Child Nutrition, specifically for child nutrition programs, the guide is applicable across all segments of foodservice and is a resource from which to start.    
  • Emergency Action Planning Guidance for Food Production Facilities.
    • Published by the New Jersey Department of Health, this resource provides some great information on the issues you might face during an emergency and what alternative procedures might be for you to pursue. It is about 10 years old now, but it is still a good starting resource.

Now is the time to start planning. Don’t wait until you’re in the eye of a storm to start thinking about it.  It is human nature to think that it won’t happen to us, but the statistics lead us to believe that it will, it is just a matter of time.  When you are facing an emergency situation, you will be glad you spent some time in 2022 developing your plan.

We are in the midst of planning our next SafeBites Webinar for the 4th quarter of the year.  If you have any topics, you’d like to see address, please reach out and let us know.  Likewise, if you have any food safety questions, we are just a quick email away.  Risk Nothing.   

Foodborne Illness Myths & Facts

“It must have been something I ate.”  That’s the typical statement when a person develops some relatively minor symptoms from food.  Maybe not severe enough to go to the doctor so you choose to tough it out without medical care.  Sudden onset of flu-like symptoms such as onset of stomach cramps, diarrhea, vomiting and fever could possibly mean you are the victim of a foodborne illness.   The illness is sometimes referred to as “food poisoning”, but it’s often misdiagnosed.

Don’t Compromise: Clean and Sanitize

The subject is cleaning and sanitizing. Chefs, food service directors, managers and staff try to practice safe food-handling at every turn in the kitchen. Don’t let that effort go down the drain by slacking off on the many aspects of sanitation. That includes dish and ware-washing techniques (pots, pans, equipment), and cleaning all the areas that give us that “neat as a pin” appearance in your customers eyes. Customers seldom fail to bring that soiled silverware or glass with lipstick on it to the attention of the manager or wait staff. Improperly cleaning and sanitizing of food contact equipment does allow transmission of pathogenic microorganisms to food and ultimately our customer.

The Route to Safer Fresh Fruits and Vegetables

Although fruits and vegetables are one of the healthiest foods sources in our diet, we continue to have foodborne disease outbreaks of significance from produce, sometimes affecting large groups of people in multiple states because of their wide distribution. The CDC estimates that fresh produce now causes a huge number of foodborne illness outbreaks in the United States. Produce needs our continued food safety efforts at the restaurant level as well as at the stages in agricultural production. Occasionally, fresh fruits and vegetables can become contaminated with harmful bacteria or viruses, such as Salmonella, E. coli 0157:H7, Norovirus, and Hepatitis A. This contamination can occur at any point from the field to our table. If eaten, contaminated fruits and vegetables can cause foodborne illness.

Be Cool, Chill Out, Refrigerate Promptly!

The Cold Chain -- Keeping perishable foods at proper cold holding temperatures (between 28°F and 41°F maximum or 0°F for frozen food) from your food producers / manufacturers to your customers has to be one of our strongest links to safe food and high quality.   Sometimes that is referred to in the food industry as “maintaining the COLD CHAIN”.  Any slip ups in the cold chain, and we have a weak link.  Most all of our state food regulations require 41°F as a cold maximum, but colder is a “best practice” policy to maintain.