What methods can be used to monitor your food safety program?

Ensures all food production, preparation and service methods are safe & hygienic and that establishments follow food legislation & regulations. The program provides the basis to monitor all food handling, from when food is received to when it is either served to customers or disposed of. This method identifies Critical Control Points within the food production, prep and service areas that must be critically watched and checked.  This ensures that food is handled  well at all times, and particular attention is given to the identified CCP. 

Critical Control Point: a point at which food is at high risk of contamination and, therefore of being able to cause food poisoning. 

eg 2:35 and 6:44- talk about XXXX

1. Assess hazards
2. Identify Critical Control points3. Control food hazards at CCP4. Complete food safety monitoring5. Identify and report inconsistent practices6. Take corrective action

7. Record findings for future reference

To ensure food hazards are controlled and minimise the threat of food contamination all the critical control points of the whole food operation need to be identified. 

Food hazards: anything related to food, including work practices and procedures, that have a potential to harm the health or safety of a person. These hazards may be actual hazards or potential hazards. 

Potentially hazardous foods 

Examples are below:

Food may be spoiled by micro-organisms: small living creatures that are present everywhere.  To avoid  food spoilage everyone involved in the handling of food for public consumption needs to be very careful in its production, preparation and presentation.

Microorganisms require certain conditions to survive and grow. If the conditions in the workplace are not conductive to growth, the presence of harmful microorganisms will be limited. That is why storing food correctly as well as thorough cleaning and sanitising so important.  For example some microbes require oxygen in order to survive. By reducing the amount of oxygen available to them you can inhibit their growth. Specific conditions of acidity (pH balance), heat and moisture as well as the presence or lack of oxygen are all factors in helping different microorganisms to thrive. All microorganisms need time to reproduce (multiply), if they are killed before they have the chance to reproduce their effects will be minimised. 

 There are  four main micro-organism groups that cause food: spoilage, contamination and poisoning.

YeastsCommon in high moisture foods with a high sugar content such as fruit and fruit juices. Yeasts production can lead to slimy or ferment food or drink.  Moulds  Moulds are highly visible to the naked eye. They appear on fruit, vegetables,  bread, cheese and cakes as fluffy, cotton wool like clumps.

Bacteria.  Common on foods such as yoghurt, cheese. Bacteria responsible for food spoilage can cause green meat. Viruses Human beings frequently pass viruses to each other: we all get colds and flus and share them with the people in our lives. In order for a virus to grow it needs to penetrate a living cell, which then becomes a host

Care must be taken in the kitchen so food doesn't become contaminated by foreign objects. Small loose objects can easily fall into food during preparation. Jewellery, hair accessories, and other small items should not be worn or taken into the kitchen.This kind of  contamination can cause serious discomfort to customers, and can lead to lititgation which causes the business to shut down. Kitchen staff need to be aware of the serious nature of having foreign bodies in prepared food. Uncovered food in the kitchen is at high risk of physical contamination. 'If in doubt, throw it out' Foregin objects include flies, hair, plastic as well as:

Summarise notes on: glass, metal, rodents and insects.

Once CCPs and exact measurements have been pre-determined by the establishment, procedures need to be set in place to monitor them. Establishment must manage the monitoring process by determining:

• whether observations should be continuous or random 
• who will be assigned the responsibly of making the observations 

• monitoring and recording: temps of cold & hot storage equipment and 

Temperature probe (refer to p. 221)

HACCP- based monitoring procedures and documentation include: • internal and external audits • dealing with problems • record keeping. 

Activity: define calibrate

 Inconsistent practices may lead to the failure of the control of food hazards. Incidents where food hazardous are not under control include:
•food poisoning
• customer complaints
• misuse of single-use items
• stocks of out-of-date foodstuffs
• spoilt or contaminated food
• unclean equipment
• existence of pests and vermin.
If an inconsistent practice is found, specific action must be decided upon and taken to correct the problem. Eg if a meat slicer is not cleaned before ham is sliced the required actions are: throw out the ham or cook it to 165° C. All of these corrective actions need to be determined as establishment policy.To ensure all corrective actions occur automatically, the training process for food-handling staff needs to include establishment policies. This results in a smaller chance of corrective actions being missed. Food poisoning outbreaks highlighted thee need for a recognised and tightly controlled food safety system  such as HACCP. HACCP requires records to be kept regarding:

• cleaning tasks
  
• storage times and temps
• holding and prep times 

• Identify records that need to be kept
• Identify who will keep these records 
• Make recording documents easily accessible to those responsibility it is to use them 
• Establish regular monitoring for times, temperature and other factors
• Provide records for corrective actions to be taken 
• Show through the records, that problems are being addressed and criteria met

For healthy people suffering food poisoning can be little more than an inconvenience. However some customer groups have a high risk of harm from food contamination and are at a high risk due to specific health issues including:

• children or babies- immunity still developing for many tolerance to illness