Food Defense Plan Resources – at just the right price…
Earlier in the month, I discussed the importance of having a solid food defense plan in place for your foodservice operation. Even if the first version of your plan is not perfect, it is a start. Having plans down on paper will force you to think through the process and ensure the vulnerable points where opportunities exist for possible contamination within the operation are mitigated.
Often, getting started is the hardest part of developing your food defense plan. So, I thought I would compile some resources for you to utilize. There are many good resources available online. However, I often find many of the resources are focused on larger-scale food processing facilities and only a few resources focus on the retail foodservice operation. When I do come across a resource developed for retail foodservice operations, it seems they often forget about, or perhaps maybe do not fully understand, the nuances of running a smaller retail foodservice operation. With this in mind, I have developed a list of resources you might find useful, with a brief description of the resource.
- Guidance for Industry: Food Security Preventive Measures Guidance for Retail Food Stores and Food Service Establishments: This document was prepared by the FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition and provides an excellent overview of food defense and recommended actions one should take in a retail foodservice operation. Included within the document is an in-depth self-assessment tool that you could use to review your current practices. Simply walking through the assessment in comparison to your current practices might be an eye-opening experience.
- Food Defense Toolkit (scroll all the way to the bottom of this page): This resource was compiled by the Health Department of Multnomah County, Oregon. Some of the resources include the county logo, but the information is still very good. Their toolkit includes a guide to establish your food defense plan, training handouts, posters, and reporting forms. All of this information was developed for retail food service operations and is easy to understand and use.
While these resources are not perfect and they certainly will not develop your food defense plan for you, they will give you the knowledge and tools necessary to get a good start on your plan.
- A Biosecurity Checklist for School Foodservice Programs: Developing a Biosecurity Management Plan: Yes, this publication is developed for schools, but before those of you who manage restaurants fly over this one, be sure to check it out. While school meal production and restaurant cook-to-order production is quite different, they have similar back-of-house processes and thus the steps to developing your food defense plans can be very similar. The checklist included in the resource is usable by all foodservice operations and can provide a good roadmap to program development and implementation.
- Food Defense Strategies for Food Service Operators: The New York State Department of Health has put this webpage together. While it was last updated in 2018 and it looks to be even a bit older than that, the information is still current. The page includes a Food Defense Strategies brochure and a Self-assessment Checklist that are easy to walk through and understand, even for someone who is just getting started with a food defense plan.
- FDA Food Defense Plan Builder: The Food Defense Plan Builder is a very powerful and, somewhat user friendly, computer application that you download to your desktop/laptop and will help you build your food defense plan. Before you jump into using it, please note that it was designed for full-scale food processing facilities and not retail foodservice operations, such as restaurants and schools. However, with some creative uses of the tools included within the program, you can make it work for a foodservice operation.
While these resources are not perfect and they certainly will not develop your food defense plan for you, they will give you the knowledge and tools necessary to get a good start on your plan. If you think I overlooked a resource that you have found useful, be sure to email it to me and I will update this blog or provide a list of resources in a future blog.
As we are gearing up for summer, please plan to attend the next SafeBites Webinar on July 21, 2021 at 1:00 pm. We have not yet finalized the topic, so if you have ideas, don’t hesitate to email me and let me know. I’d love to include your suggestions and/or answer the food safety questions you have. Likewise, feel free to reach out to any food safety questions you have, and we will research the answer and get back to you. Risk Nothing.
Sanitation, Sanitation, Where Art Thou?
Continuing the theme I picked up on a few months ago, discussing common causes of foodborne illness, I’d like to focus this blog on cross contamination, more precisely sanitation. Sanitation is another issue that employees don’t often do at home, so they discount the importance of it in the food production environment. That is to say that they have never made someone sick at home because they only clean their countertops and they have likely never sanitized their kitchen, so why is it so important in a foodservice facility?
Handwashing: The Habit that Isn’t as Common as We May Think
Earlier this year, I started to focus our FoodHandler Food Safety blogs on common food safety issues faced in each foodservice operation across the world. We’ve covered some of the most common issues, but perhaps none is more common than improper hand hygiene.
Is Implementing a Color-Coded Food Safety Plan Right for your Operation?
Foodborne pathogens are by far the most prevalent cause of foodborne illness in the United States and across the world. There are 31 known agents that cause foodborne illnesses, and more that are unspecified or yet undiscovered – remember, E. Coli 0157:H7 wasn’t identified until the early-1980s. It is estimated each year, 48 million illnesses occur because of these known and unknown pathogens, resulting in over 3,000 deaths.
Maintaining your Equipment: Is it the Missing Ingredient in your Recipe for Food Safety?
Although I am no longer in day-to-day operations, between our students and foodservice lab at the university and my volunteer activities in my local church, I keep a close hand in food production. This past week, I had the opportunity to lead a group of men at our church in preparation of a luncheon for 100 women who were attending a spirituality retreat. Over the course of the morning, I realized our main cooler in the kitchen was not functioning properly and was about 10˚F above the required temperature. While we do have a commercial kitchen, we do not routinely log temperatures, so when the unit started to malfunction is questionable. Even more concerning was not the lunch we were preparing for, but the dinner that was served the night before for 300+ families in the parish.
