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.

One of the main causes of pathogenic contamination is often cross contamination, which is the transfer of harmful bacteria from one person, objective, or item to another. For example, a cook doesn’t wash their hands thoroughly after handling raw chicken and cutting romaine lettuce.  While many of you in foodservice are aware of the color-coding food safety systems in place in many foodservice and food production operations, last month I had received a question about these systems, so I wanted to take a bit to discuss these in the blog. In the foodservice world, we are not as able to color-code and sperate things via zones as well as our counterparts in food processing plants; the truth is that all foodservice operations would benefit by implementing and utilizing a color-coded system for food preparation.

The typical color-coding system would involve having different knives, cutting boards, utensils, and even storage containers for different types of food items. The system should be designed to what is best for your operation, but the typical system involves using red for raw meat, yellow for raw poultry, blue for seafood, green for produce, grey for cooked protein, and white for dairy and bread. There is now a purple color added to the mix to help alleviate cross contact issues related to allergens.

Having a strong color-coding system in your operation can help employees to visually identify food safety issues during production…and supervisors can easily scan the work area to denote possible cross contamination issues.

Having a strong color-coding system in your operation can help employees to visually identify food safety issues during production. Not only can this be a benefit for employees, but supervisors can easily scan the work area to denote possible cross contamination issues that may be present during any given point in product.  However, a few key items must be in place.  First, employees must be trained to know which color goes with which items and this must be reinforced by appropriate signage and effective managerial control. Recently, I was in a foodservice operation where they had all the colors available to implement a strong color-coded system, but sadly I don’t think the managers nor employees gave any thought to how the colors were intended to be used.  Yellow was being used for produce, green for raw meat, and purple for dairy. No one was trained on why the color-coded items were purchased (assuming they were purchased for this reason and not just to have different colored cutting boards, knives, and storage containers).  Second, be sure to have enough of each item to meet the demands of your operation.  If you intend to have green utilized for only produce, make sure you have enough in stock to meet the demands of your employees. In the course of a typical day of production, your employees will intend to use the correct item, but when under stress to get food out to the guest, safety will be pushed aside if what they need is not present and you don’t have a strong food safety culture.

When developing your color-coded plan, don’t forget to explore your glove options and build these into your plan. FoodHandler has several different color options available in our Thinsense™ line, including clear, black, blue, pink, and coming soon, white.

Keep an eye out for the release of our second SafeBites Webinar of 2022 in the coming weeks.  We hope you like the new on-demand only option with the Webinars.  If you have any questions as you watch them, be sure to follow-up with me via email. Risk Nothing.

Meat Color and Doneness: Persistent Pinking

Late in June, my family and I were able to visit the Black Hills, an area of the country in which I have not had the opportunity to spend much time.  One evening, as we dined at a local restaurant, I observed a table across the dining room sending back a dinner.  While I couldn’t hear the entire conversation and I certainly wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, it was apparent that the customer was unhappy with the cooking of their hamburger and was sending it back because it was too pink in the middle.  That immediately brought to my mind the phenomenon known as persistent pinking.  A term I became familiar with because of work done by some colleagues here at Kansas State, which they present each summer to a group of foodservice operators who join us on-campus for an in-depth week-long look at all things food safety.

Quat Binding – Why this Can Have a Disastrous Impact on Your Sanitation Program.

In June, I had the opportunity to represent FoodHandler and speak on food safety behavior for customers of Martin Bros. Distributing in Waterloo, Iowa.  One of the questions that was asked caught me a little off guard. The question was about quat binding.  It caught me off guard not because it was a bad question, but only because it was not something I had previously been asked nor had not yet been exposed to the phenomenon. However, I soon learned that in certain jurisdictions, it is resulting in changes to how sanitizing cloths are to be stored in sanitizing buckets (or not) in the foodservice industry. When I returned home from the trip, I had to dig into it to learn about what quat binding is and how it might impact foodservice operations.

Are Grades for Foodservice Inspections a Good Idea?

I generally try to stay away from controversial topics in my blog, but this is one I thought it might be interesting to discuss. Occasionally on my travels, I will come across a state or a local jurisdiction that requires foodservice inspection scores be posted in the window of the establishment.  The idea is to allow would-be customers the ability to see how the foodservice operation in which they are about to eat scored on their latest health inspection.