Food Safety
Personal Practices
HFA 4MI
Food Handling and Illness
• Food handling practices
• Can cause contamination
• Can allow microorganisms to grow
• Can fail to control growth when intended to do
so
• All of these practices can cause foodborne illness
Fight BAC!
CLEAN!
Personal Cleanliness:
• Wash hands before food preparation, after
sneezing, coughing, using the rest room, and
touching face or hair
• Keep hair away from face
• Wear clean clothes/apron (dirty clothing has
bacteria)
• Don’t handle food with open cut or sore – STAPH
• Avoid cooking and tasting with same spoon;
licking of fingers is prohibited.
• Wash hands after handling raw meat/eggs
Handwashing
Purpose?
• Remove soil
• Remove pathogens
• Reduce microbial load
How it actually works . . .
• Soap lather pulls dirt and oily soils from the skin
• Lather suspends soils and pathogens which are washed
away in running water
Hands also . . .
• Contact many other things:
• Door knobs, stair rails, controls, money, telephones
• Pick things up from the floor
• Touch the face, hair
• Remove soiled clothing
• Place things in the garbage
Personal Practices
Personal Behaviour
• Avoid:
• Sneezing, coughing or
blowing the nose
• Can distribute millions
of pathogens
• Spitting
• Contaminates surfaces
and distributes
pathogens
• A sneeze can move at a
rate of 150 km per hour!
• Hazardous practices
while handling food:
• Eating or drinking
• Chewing gum
• Smoking
• Droplets of saliva can
contain thousands of
pathogen cells
Fight BAC!
SEPARATE!
Cross-Contamination
• Passing of
microorganisms or
other harmful
substances indirectly
from one source to
another
• Examples:
• Cutting board used for
raw meat, then salad
vegetables
• Handling money or using
phone then handling
food without
handwashing
Practices that cause
contamination
• Handling food when ill
• Not washing hands correctly
• Not wearing clean clothing
• Not cleaning and sanitizing food contact surfaces
after use
• Not protecting food when construction or
maintenance are being carried out
Avoid cross-contamination
• Keep meat and meat juice from vegetables
• Keep work areas clean
• Use clean spoon for tasting food
• Two towels - drying dishes (tea towel)/
wiping hands (paper towel)
• Use clean dishcloth each day
Fight BAC!
COOK!
Using heat to control bacteria
• Keep hot foods hot
• Thoroughly cool hot foods and reheat
thoroughly
• Bring sauces, soups, etc. to a boil when
reheating
• Foods should not be in the danger
temperature zone for more than two hours
• Use a clean thermometer to measure internal
temperature
• Divide large amounts of leftovers in small,
shallow containers for quick cooking
Fight BAC!
CHILL!
Using cold to control bacteria
• Keep cold food cold (below 40°F)
• Check temperature in refrigerator and freezer
periodically; freezer should be at zero degrees or
below
• Clean refrigerator often
• Leftovers stored with tight cover
• Thaw frozen foods in refrigerator
• Do not leave on countertop to cool