Score Big in Food Safety: Amp Up Your Food Safety Education Month
It is mid-August and in just a few short weeks it will be that time of the year again. The time we wait for all year long – not football season…Food Safety Education Month! Fair enough to say, it will be football season, too – but each September in the United States we celebrate National Food Safety Education Month, a time dedicated to highlighting the importance of food safety practices and education. While the month is dedicated to those across the food chain – from home cooks to those who prepare food in foodservice operations, I like to focus most on our foodservice professionals, who prepare billons of meals each year for the public.
If you’ve kept up with our blog at all, you are likely to already know the statistic that approximately 48 million people in the United States become ill due to contaminated food each year in the United States. During each September, National Food Safety Education Month provides us an opportunity to recommit ourselves to enhancing food safety practices, training staff, and reinforcing the vital role everyone plays in preventing foodborne illnesses within our businesses.
Foodservice professionals play an important role in reducing the estimated number of illnesses caused by foodborne illnesses each year. As managers and leaders in the foodservice industry, we must be committed to education and training as key components in ensuring that all staff members understand the importance of food safety. From line cooks to servers, every team member must be aware of best practices, including personal hygiene, cross-contamination prevention, and proper cooking temperatures. By investing in comprehensive food safety education, businesses can minimize risks and ensure a safe dining experience for their customers.
As we approach September, take time now and recommit yourselves and your businesses to food safety and food safety education. Focus on several key areas to enhance your food safety knowledge and practices:
- Personal Hygiene: Proper handwashing and personal hygiene are fundamental to not only preventing the spread of foodborne illnesses, but to general health and wellness. Staff should be trained in the importance of regular handwashing, wearing clean uniforms, and using gloves appropriately when handling food.
- Temperature Control: Maintaining safe temperatures is crucial for preventing the growth of harmful pathogens. All your staff can likely recite the temperature danger zone in their sleep, but make sure they really appreciate the implications of not ensuring that cold food stays cold and hot food, hot.
- Cross-Contamination Prevention: Emphasize the importance of using separate cutting boards, utensils, and storage containers for raw and cooked foods. Regular cleaning and sanitizing of work surfaces, equipment, and utensils are also important considerations in maintaining a safe kitchen.
… National Food Safety Education Month provides us an opportunity to recommit ourselves to enhancing food safety practices, training staff, and reinforcing the vital role everyone plays in preventing food borne illnesses within our businesses.
To maximize the impact of Food Safety Education Month, plan now to implement a food safety certification program in September to make sure all of your key kitchen staff are certified in food safety. The more staff who are certified and truly recognize the importance of food safety helps you to build that food safety culture that we so often discuss. If you’re unable to do a full food safety training class, plan for some interactive training sessions, workshops, or pre-shift meetings to reinforce key concepts and provide learning opportunities.
Embracing food safety education in your business empowers your management and staff to make informed decisions and contribute to a safer food industry. Food Safety Education Month is an excellent opportunity to renew your commitment to food safety and enhance your employees’ knowledge, skills, and commitment to serving safe food. Risk Nothing.
Developing Good Food Safety Habits
Good habits and habit development are something that has fascinated me for several years. If you’ve attended any the training programs or presentations that my colleagues and I have conducted through our Center for Food Safety in Child Nutrition Programs, you’ve likely heard me opine about the importance of habits and how habits are created. Many times, in foodservice operations we wonder why our staff don’t follow the food safety practices we have established in our operation. Perhaps they don’t wash their hands when they are required, perhaps they just don’t use the proper method of handwashing, or perhaps we find that they don’t complete our HACCP logs as often as our program dictates should occur. And while we can stomp our feet and say “it is their job, they should just do it”, it really isn’t that simple. We can’t order people to change, although if we could, business and human resources would be so much simpler.
Getting Your Playbook for Food Safety Organized
As anyone who has ever worked in a foodservice operation knows, from the time food is received in your establishment to the time it is served to your customers, following proper food safety practices is crucial. What many don’t often think about is this time really should extend from the time the manager places their orders with their suppliers (including which purveyors you utilize), through the time the food is consumed – even if that consumption occurs off your premises and days after the original order was picked up by the guest. This is something that has certainly been highlighted by the pandemic as customers across the nation are utilizing take-out, curbside to go, and third-party delivery options more so now than ever before.
Getting Started with Building the Infrastructure
Hopefully in our first January blog, we convinced you of the importance of establishing an infrastructure within your operation to support a safe food culture. So, how does one go about doing this? Well, like any major project, break it into small bites. In our opinion, having a written guide for employees that documents expectations related to food safety basics of employee health and hygiene, temperature controls, and cleaning and sanitizing is the first step. Having this documentation serves as a reference for training and helps fulfill the mission of most foodservice operators which is to serve safe, quality food.
Food Safety Resolutions for the New Year
Finally, 2020 is in our rearview mirror and we can all turn the page to 2021! Resolutions for the new year might be more of the same from prior years (lose weight, exercise more, less screen time, etc.) OR you may have identified new practices to implement in your operation. If the latter, likely goals included some practices related to food safety – especially given the turmoil of 2020 and heightened concern by customers. It is our philosophy that attention to safe food handling practices is a win-win for any operation because of the direct relationship between food safety and food quality, which in turn leads to customer satisfaction. This past year has also demonstrated that attention to safety can affect the bottom line. Thus, the topic of our first SafeBites webinar for 2021 is on the topic of the return on investment of food safety, it is scheduled for January 20, so register now and please plan to attend.
