September is National Food Safety Month: The Future of Food Safety

Each September we recognize the importance of food safety every day in our operations by celebrating National Food Safety Month. This year’s theme, The Future of Food Safety, emphasizes the changing environment in which foodservice operates.   Each week of September has a unique focus:

  1. Regulation Changes—Staying compliant with new regulations
  2. Suppliers—Best practices for receiving food
  3. Consumers—Responding to new trends and technologies
  4. Employees—Their role in ensuring food safety

Go to www.foodsafetyfocus.com to download resources related to these four focus areas.

At FoodHandler, we believe that food safety should be the focus in foodservice operations every day. This month our blog presents ideas for creating a positive food safety culture, which we believe forms the foundation for a strong food safety program. We are pleased to provide on-going support for operators through webinars, blogs, signage, logs, and other resources. Let us know how we can support you—

The Future of Food Safety is important for all of us. Do something extra this month to focus on food safety—provide a training session, use a table tent to communicate to customers your concern for food safety—let your imagination run wild!

Person in Charge has Major Role Related to Employee Health

In the last blog, we talked about the importance of having healthy employees working in a foodservice operation and how that is related to foodborne illness. In this blog, we discuss employee health controls, one of five key public health interventions needed to control for risk factors of foodborne illness. The purpose of this control is to minimize the possibility that employees contaminate food. That means that employees need to be healthy, and that they report any symptoms or illnesses that might impact the safety of food served to customers.

Healthy Employees Keep Food Safe

Last month we talked about norovirus, the leading cause of foodborne illness outbreaks. Today we will turn our attention to overall employee health, and its role in keeping food safe. Many of you who are in my generation can relate to the fact that you rarely called in to work sick, and when you did you probably couldn’t get out of bed. You may also relate to being a manager and discouraging people from calling in sick because it was so difficult to be short-handed. Well, that mind set just has to change for the health of everyone!