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Ensuring the safety of food served away from the home is a great responsibility.
Managers provide written policies and procedures to guide food handling practices
however the last line of defense against foodborne illness is you,
the food handler. Food safety really is in your hands. As a food handler who is
or may need to become certified in food safety you must know the steps to take
to protect the safety of food that will be served to your customers. Some of your
customers may be young children or the elderly whose immune systems may not be
able to fight off illness caused by contaminated food. Many safe food
handling practices are related to personal hygiene. Personal hygiene is
very important when working with food. If possible wear clothes other than your
uniform to work and change into a clean uniform once at work. Your clothes should
be covered with a clean chef coat or apron before beginning work. Some
operations provide chef coats and others provide aprons to wear over a shirt with
the food service logo. Before work begins check your appearance and hair restraint
if your hair is not completely covered by the hair restraint be sure to tuck
the extra hair under it. Hair can be an indirect and direct contaminator to food.
Hats, hair coverings, or hair nets along with beard restraints and clothing that
covers body hair need to be worn in the kitchen when preparing food. Remove all
jewelry except for a plain wedding band because bacteria can hide in jewelry
settings. Other jewelry such as an earring can pose a hazard if it falls in
the food. Removing jewelry also protects you from injury should a necklace,
bracelet, watch, or ring get caught in food production equipment. Medical alert
bracelets may be worn around the ankle. Check your fingernails to ensure they
are short and clean. Employers may provide a locker or other place to store
personal items during the work day. When you are finished getting ready for work
wash your hands with warm water and soap. Thoroughly clean your hands by rubbing
them together. Be sure to rub between your fingers and continue up your arms.
Lather for 10 to 15 seconds before rinsing. Rinse your hands before drying
them. The entire hand washing process should take 20 seconds. Singing the
happy birthday song through twice takes about 20 seconds. When your hands are
rinsed, if there is not an automatic faucet, turn off the water with a paper
towel to avoid hand re-contamination. Then use a single-use towel to dry your hands.
Even properly washed hands may still have harmful bacteria or viruses on them.
These two images show differences in microorganisms between properly washed
hands and hands that were just rinsed. Just rinsing hands with water is not
sufficient to reduce disease-causing microorganisms to non harmful levels.
Hands should never be washed in food preparation or sinks used for cleaning
and sanitizing small equipment. To do so would promote cross-contamination. Hand
washing sinks should only be used for hand-washing.
They should be conveniently located by food preparation, food dispensing and
dishwashing areas as well as in restrooms. Hand-washing stations should
include potable or drinkable running water, soap, and disposable towels,
continuous towel system, or heat air dryer located by the sinks. Ideally your
workplace includes a hand sink with an automatic faucet. This prevents employees
from recontaminating hand because they do no nee to turn off the water. Use a single-use towel or
forced air dryer to dry your hands rather than cloth towels or your apron.
This image shows hands that were cleaned properly but became re-contaminated when they were dried
on an apron. Open cuts or wounds must be covered with both a bandage and glove or
finger cot after hands have been washed. It is important to use a dry durable
tight-fitting bandage. Use of a bandage and a glove provides a double barrier to
cover cuts or wounds on hands, fingers and wrists. When you
perform non-food production and service activities such as taking out the trash
remove your apron and hang it up in an appropriate place away from production.
Do not place it on the counter. When you return to work, wash your hands
remembering to sing the Happy Birthday song twice. Then inspect your apron
before putting it back on. If the apron is dirty, replace it with a clean apron.
It is necessary to wash hands between tasks. For example if canned foods are on
the menu you may need to use a cart to load cases of product from the storeroom
and return to the kitchen. After completion of this task hands should be
washed before handling food. Whenever you touch something that is not cleaned and
sanitized you need to wash your hands. Wash hands before entering the food
production area, handling clean and sanitized equipment and putting on
gloves. Always wash hands after eating or drinking, using the restroom, smoking,
coughing or sneezing, touching face or hair, using tissues or handkerchiefs,
handling dirty or soiled equipment, wiping counters, cleaning spills or
mopping floors, or taking out the trash. Gloves are one way to provide a barrier
between hands and ready-to-eat foods or those foods that won't receive further
cooking. Wash hands between working with raw foods like chicken and ready-to-eat
foods such as fresh vegetables and between touching soiled and clean
dishware. Gloves are packed with the clean side exposed. If dirty hands are
touching the clean side of the gloves the food can become contaminated. In this
photo the glowing purple color on the workers hands indicates potential
contaminants. Therefore it is important that hands be clean before putting on a
pair of gloves. Glove use is an important step in preventing the spread of
bacteria from hands to ready-to-eat foods. To prevent cross-contamination
gloves should be changed between tasks. As a food production worker you should
not drink or eat food in the production area. There should be a designated area
for staff to eat and drink during breaks other than the kitchen. Your manager may
allow staff to keep a beverage in a covered container that has a straw in
the kitchen. Food Code allows this as long as the container is handled so as
to prevent contamination of the employees hands, exposed food, clean
equipment, utensils and other items. It is good manners and important to
controlling the spread of germs not to sneeze into food, onto equipment or into
your hands. Sneezing into your elbow captures any airborne contaminants. If
you should come down with cold or flu symptoms stay home. Although you may not
like to miss work or worry about letting coworkers down it is important to stay
home and not spread illness to others. If you have a simple cold talk with your
supervisor to determine if there is work that you could do in non-food areas. If
you have a fever, nausea ,vomiting or diarrhea you should not come to work.
While you may not want to cause the kitchen to be short-staffed those with
these symptoms increase risk of disease transmission to others. The Food Code
requires that employees inform the person in charge of food service if they
have been diagnosed with Salmonella causing typhoid fever or other strains
of this bacteria, Shigella, Shiga Toxin-Producing Escherichia coli,
Hepatitis A virus or Norovirus. Now you know how personal hygiene impacts food
safety. Remember you are responsible for ensuring the safety of foods served in
your operation.
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