Australian Convenience Store News - Food Safety - Vital for food safety hygiene & care in premises.

leanliness and the layout of your premises will affect food safety.

Many factors can affect the ultimate cleanliness of your premises. Such things as the types and coatings of surfaces that the food comes into contact with as well as the age of these surfaces can make a difference to the safety of the product.

Older surfaces with, for example, missing or cracked tiles and broken vinyl, can be difficult to clean and sanitise effectively. Cracks can harbour dirt and bacteria. When food comes into contact with such surfaces the dirt and bacteria can be transferred to the product. If this happens in the packaging area it can be dangerous as bacteria transferred to a ready-to-eat product is unlikely to be killed by any other consumer action such as cooking. When eaten, the contaminated food can cause illness.

Any damaged surfaces need to be replaced as soon as possible. Replace cracked and damaged tiles, grout that has dislodged over the years, missing sealant where benches join, laminated edges of wooden benches where the wood or chip board is exposed. All of these can allow bacteria to be transferred to food. Rusty metal also needs to be replaced as the pitted surface can harbour dirt and bacteria.

Another factor that makes for easier cleaning (and let's face it - if it's easier, people are more likely to do it) is having coving rather than 90 degree angles where surfaces join. Coving is the curved surface that joins a flat surface to the adjoining upright surface. See your local hardware store for ideas on how to achieve this.

Sanitise to Kill Bacteria

Ensure that the equipment and preparation surfaces are clean and sanitised. Most businesses clean but many are unaware of sanitising. Sanitising will kill the bacteria on a surface and reduce them to a safe level - provided initial cleaning has been completed effectively.

To clean effectively:
1. Scrape down surfaces to remove as much foreign matter as possible;
2. Use a detergent with hot water to remove foreign matter and dirt, and dissolve grease;
3. Rinse and then sanitise the clean surface.

There are some all-in-one sanitising and detergent products, but you still need to complete the same number of steps to make the surface ready to use for food again. You still have to scrape, dissolve grease and remove dirt, rinse and then kill bacteria. To select a good detergent or sanitiser use products approved by AQIS .

Layout for Safe Food

The manner in which work is conducted and product travels around your premises can affect the final outcome of your food product - that is - 'safe food'. If you have raw food received and transferred to the coolroom passing through the cooking and packaging areas, there is always the possibility that the finished product may become contaminated by the raw product.

The thing to remember is that the cooked/finished product has been through what is called a 'kill step' where harmful bacteria in the raw product were killed by the cooking process. Bacteria may be transferred back to the finished product as easily as someone putting a pack of raw meat on the packing bench for a moment to open the coolroom door. Bacteria in the juices from the raw product can then be transferred to the cooked product and if allowed to multiply, can cause illness.

Temperature Control

We would all like to think that it is an ideal world where, at every stage, people treat food properly and the food stays in temperature control at all times. But it's not. Product is temperature abused at many stages. As food handlers, the only time we have control over the product is while we are in charge, so, during that time make sure that it is not temperature abused.

Extending shelf life is something we all would like to be able to do. It CAN be done. Shelf life has been extended in some traditional industries once thought impossible. This has been done with the simple approaches of keeping things clean and keeping things cold. When these two factors were controlled to the best of the business's ability the shelf life of their product was extended dramatically. This outcome made customers happy and business expanded.

So you see, keeping food safe is not only vital but can have added advantages as well.

By: Len Wallace. HLP Controls Pty Ltd - Food safety Consultants - registered Food Safety System Facilitators with the Quality Society of Australasia. For further information phone 1800 500 160.