PERSONAL HYGIENE

Personal Hygiene

Personal Hygiene

1. How personnel hygiene control, including compliance with current legislation and code of practice, contribute to food safety in your catering business?

Identifying and controlling food hazards

As the proprietor of a food business, you must:

* make sure food is supplied or sold in a hygienic way;

* identify food safety hazards;

* know which steps in your activities are critical for food safety;

* ensure safety controls are in place, maintained and reviewed.

Controls do not have to be complex. There are systems that can be used by food businesses to ensure that hazards are identified and controls are in place. Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) is one of a number of such systems.

Basic hygiene requirements

The regulations aim to set out basic hygiene principles, which are generally not new, but their emphasis is different from previous regulations. They focus more strongly on how to identify and control food safety risks at each stage of the process of preparing and selling food.

Rather than simply following a list of rules, the regulations let you assess the risk to food safety and then apply controls relevant to your own situation. Not all the requirements for the structure and equipment of food premises will apply to you. Some are followed by the words 'where appropriate' or 'where necessary'. For example, one provision states that, 'where appropriate' floors must allow surface drainage. But where you have a system to ensure water does not build up, so that there is no risk to food safety, actual floor drains may not be necessary. So there is no absolute requirement to have them.

Basic requirements for food businesses Food premises should:

* be clean and maintained in good repair;

* be designed and constructed to permit good hygiene practices;

* have an adequate supply of potable (drinking) water;

* have suitable controls in place to protect against pests;

* have adequate natural and/or artificial lighting;

* have sufficient natural and/or mechanical ventilation;

* provide clean lavatories which do not lead directly into food rooms;

* have adequate hand-washing facilities;

* be provided with adequate drainage.

Rooms where food is prepared, treated or processed should generally have surface finishes which are easy to clean and, where necessary, disinfect. This would, for instance, apply to wall, floor and equipment finishes. The rooms should also have:

* Adequate facilities for washing food and equipment;

* Adequate facilities for the storage and removal of food waste.

Supplies of raw materials

Do not buy or supply any raw materials if you think that even after sorting or processing they could make food unfit for human consumption. Any material which you suspect or know to be infected or contaminated with parasites or foreign substances to this extent should be rejected.

Quality of water in food

There must be an adequate supply of potable (drinking) water, to be used whenever necessary to ensure food is not contaminated. In the vast majority of cases, this is supplied via the public water supply. But if there is any doubt about the quality of a water supply, you should seek ...