Food Safety is an important part of every food business from production to sales. Food safety includes food hygiene factors needed to ensure the food we eat is safe.
There are many groups of people who are at a higher risk when preparing food. These groups are pregnant women, young children, older adults and people with immune system weaker by disease or medical treatments. When preparing food for these groups, particular care needs to be taken and in some cases, foods need to be avoided. The effect of a food-borne illness will be much worse if the person is in a high-risk group. Now we will look at these high-risk groups.
Changes during pregnancy alter the mother’s immune system, making pregnant women more susceptible to foodborne illness. Harmful bacteria can also cross the placenta and infect an unborn baby whose immune system is under-developed and not able to fight infection. Foodborne illness during pregnancy is serious and can lead to miscarriage, premature delivery, stillbirth, sickness or the death of a newborn baby.
If you wrap or package food as any part of your business, including selling food to take away, then you must follow special requirements. Materials used for wrapping and packaging food must not be a source of contamination. Only use packaging material that is specially designed for food and store this packaging in a dry […]
There is a common myth that freezing kills bacteria but this is not the case. Freezing does not kill bacteria, they simply become inactive when frozen due to the low temperature, but also the lack of available water. Frozen food will usually keep for a long time, although the taste or texture of the food […]
The food hygiene rating reflects the hygiene standards found at the time any given business is inspected by a food safety officer. These officers are specially trained to assess food hygiene standards. A business can be given one of these ratings. Food hygiene rating is ‘0’: which means urgent improvements are necessary Food hygiene rating […]
In all workplaces, there need to be adequate first aid kits. There will be trained first aiders in the business, but it is a good idea to find out who the first aiders are and what is in the first aid kit. In a kitchen, there is usually also a burns kit. Catering first aid […]
HACCP, or The Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point System, are internationally accepted as the system of choice for food safety management. It is a preventative approach to food safety based on the following seven principles: 1 Identify any hazards that must be prevented, eliminated or reduced 2 Identify the critical control points (CCPs) at […]