Welcome to National Food Safety Education Month!

In September of each year, we not only have the opportunity to celebrate Labor Day, but we also welcome National Food Safety Education Month! It is this time of the year when it is important to remember that Foodborne illnesses are still a major concern in the United States, although I am guessing many Americans don’t think about the safety of the food they eat as they go throughout their daily lives.  The statistics show one in every six Americans will suffer from a foodborne illness each year, for a total of about 48 million cases each year.

Luckily enough, there are thousands of Americans whose job is to help protect the food supply. From the farmer who raises the animals or plants the crops we harvest to sell in grocery stores, to the supermarket managers who monitor the temperature of their frozen and refrigerated display cases each day, to the food service manager who ensures all the proper steps are followed in the preparation of the meals that consumers eat in schools and restaurants across the United States on a daily basis. Along the way, the food is transported, stored, and inspected at various points, but ultimately each one of us bears some responsibility to ensure the food we eat is safe.

… there are thousands of Americans whose job is to help protect the food supply…but ultimately each one of us bears some responsibility to ensure that the food we eat is safe. 

While many of our readers are in the foodservice profession, there are several who I am guessing are not. Those who are not in the profession can play just as much of a role in keeping food safe as a professional, and it all starts at the grocery store. The FDA, CDC, and many state university extension agencies have many different resources to help you keep food safe in your home and ultimately protect your family from a foodborne illness.  Here are a few of my favorites to check out:

As we have discussed many times in these blogs, professionals have an even greater responsibility to protect the food they serve to guests.  In many cases, the food they serve will not just make four or five members of a family sick, but many, in some cases hundreds of people, could fall ill due to mistakes in a foodservice kitchen.  One step I would encourage all managers to undertake during this food safety month is to do an in-depth review of your recipes and incorporate crucial control points into each recipe you have.  This is one step that can have a huge impact on the safety of the food served in your operation and serves as a constant reminder for foodservice employees to cook food to the proper temperature. In most cases, small steps can help you transform your organization and truly set the foundation for a solid food safety culture.  Afterall, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!

If you haven’t already checked it out, please check out the latest SafeBites Food Safety Webinar, “Creating Clarity for Exceptional Food Safety Results”, presented by Dr. Brett Horton. This webinar is a bit different than the past ones in that we don’t focus just on food safety but dig into how to create exceptional programs and develop a team. Achieving exceptional results requires trust, appropriate conflict to achieve optimum results, commitment, and accountability by all members of the organization. Of course, we do this while keeping food safety in mind, but the discussion could really apply to multiple aspects of your life. I promise you will learn something, I certainly did! Be sure to drop us a note if you enjoy the webinars or have suggestions for future content that you would like to learn. Risk Nothing.

Handling Leafy Green Salad

We have had several produce outbreaks of foodborne disease from our lettuce, spinach, and other greens in the last several years that have been devastating to the produce growers and distributors, retail grocery stores, restaurants, and consumers.

Food Packaging Safety in a Vacuum

Extending the shelf life of fresh foods has come a long way in the food industry since curing meats with salt and sugar or canning vegetables with heat processing. The food service and consumer markets needed some better visual packages to draw the eye to the freshness factor and the technology of food packaging has filled our dinner plate. Vacuum packaging and modified atmosphere packaging, shortened to “MAP”, are the terms used for the method of food packaging used every time we choose convenience over more complex scratch meal preparation. According to industry statistics, billions of packages of vacuum and MAP-packaged foods flood the marketplace today. In both modified-atmosphere and vacuum packaging, food is packaged in a pouch made of barrier film.

The Eleven Commandments of Food Safety at Your Restaurant

Lists help us remember all kinds of information. Given the list of recent national foodborne outbreaks in the news, keep repeating this list to your food service team. They are kind of like “commandments”. As a professional in a food service facility we should think of the very basic food safety concepts that every crew member should aspire to learn, even though this list may have different priorities based on your menu. The first 3 apply to anyone who serves food, from a bag of popcorn to a full course meal. As chefs or managers, if we can “set the example” by repeating good food safety practices visibly to the crew, it will help them understand how important it is to the success of your facility. Thou shalt:

The Worst Customer Complaint: Foodborne Illness

Food service managers and crew try to follow the rules of food protection.  Yet, occasionally a complaint may arise and these calls take priority over all other daily crises.  If you have been in the food service industry long enough, you may have gotten one of these.  A customer may claim, "I think your food made me ill." These words inflict instant anxiety. If it happens, here are some next steps to think about in advance of such a claim: