Receiving food delivery is an important activity in any food handling business. This is to ensure that all food is received fresh and safe when it enters the foodservice operation. All food deliveries must be moved to proper storage as quickly as possible.
Clean designated receiving tables must be provided for all food. It is essential to keep raw meats away from ready-to-eat food such as salads, breads, etc. If the food is not separated, dangerous contamination can occur. It is very easy in a busy environment for delivered foods to come into contact with each other. This is why great care must be taken at all times to prevent this. Always use separate probes for different types of food. For example, never use a probe that was just used for raw meat, such as chicken, to measure the temperature of a ready-to-eat food. Never bring packaging material into the kitchen. It may have become contaminated outside.
Record and check all food coming into the kitchen. All personnel responsible for receiving and storing must be fully trained and empowered to reject any food that is not fit for use. eLearn Safety offers an easy and convenient way to train your staff in basic safe food handling through fully online food safety courses. The Food Safety (HACCP) Level 1 is an ideal starting point! This course is designed to introduce participants to food safety and hygiene issues. It is based on the training criteria set down by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland’s Guide to Food Safety Training Level 1.
It is important to check every delivery before the food is accepted.
Always check the following:
The above list is an important practice – not for safety alone, but for quality as well.
Food must be always rejected if the food packaging is damaged, there are signs of pests and relevant food temperatures are not observed. A record of all received and returned food should be kept. Similarly, it is important to store food as quickly as it can be put away. Above all, always remove outside packaging and store frozen food first. In addition, raw meat should be transported and stored separately from ready-to-eat foods. Never accept a delivery that is left outside of your premises and exposed to elements! Always receive food deliveries directly from a delivery person!
Please remember – it is a legal requirement that staff who are involved in a food environment are trained and/or supervised commensurate with their work activity!
Myelearnsafety offers fully online Food Safety (HACCP) courses.
To find out more, please check our Courses page.
Alternatively, should you need any additional information, please do not hesitate to let us know via email info@elearn.ie
Following food law and compliance are integral parts of any food handling/producing business. The food business can ensure compliance with food law by operating a Food Safety Management System. This system should be based on Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) principles.
It is a legal requirement for any food business to demonstrate what procedures are followed to ensure that the food it handles is safe to consume. All procedures must be recorded in written form.
For a food handling business to ensure food law and compliance, everyone who handles food must be trained and qualified in safe food handling. For easy and convenient ways to ensure safe food handling competencies, eLearn Safety developed fully online Food Safety courses with learner in mind. All learners are supported throughout their learning experience and into their working lives. eLearn Safety staff has extensive training experience with many years industry experience. Priority is to ensure that all learners are fully prepared to differentiate themselves in the workplace. Once the training has been completed, all training and refresher up-to-date training records should be kept.
A food business must be able to demonstrate where foodstuffs came from, where they went (if the business sells to retailers) and who did what in the meantime. The procedures that are followed (such as daily checks) must be kept in place permanently and all records must be available for examination by the relevant Authorities, in most cases Environmental Health Officers from HSE on the behalf of the FSAI.
Operating an effective Food Safety Management System means that aspects of the running of a food business are routinely checked and recorded. This will enable the business to comply with both; legal requirements and fulfil due diligence requisite.
Everyone deserves to be protected against food that might make them ill. This is what the food safety law aims to do. By operating an effective Food Safety Management System, businesses can abide by the law more easily. Good procedures and practices will go a long way towards ensuring a full compliance. Unfortunately this is not always the case. In October 2023, the FSAI served five enforcement orders on food business. According to the FSAI, some of the reasons for the Enforcement Orders in October include:
…cooking trays not washed after use and congealed with grease and charred food particles; mould growth visible on the internal surfaces of a milkshake blender with a foul odour detected when the lid was removed; the presence of undeclared allergens in food with a potential to cause a life threatening allergic reaction; no evidence of a food safety culture; a drinking water sample taken from the food business indicating contamination of the supply; large open containers of raw chicken left on various surfaces throughout the food premises at room temperature, permitting the growth of bacteria; no hand washing observed during the inspection; filthy premises with dirty cardboard used both as a food contact surface for cooked rice and on the flooring throughout the premises.
Providing unsafe food is a serious food business failure. This may result in serious legal actions, prosecutions and imprisonment.
Please remember – it is a legal requirement that staff who are involved in a food environment are trained and/or supervised commensurate with their work activity!
Myelearnsafety offers fully online Food Safety (HACCP) courses.
To find out more, please check our Courses page.
Alternatively, should you need any additional information, please do not hesitate to let us know via email info@elearn.ie
Cleaning and food safety are inseparable terms. A clean kitchen is one that has been thoroughly cleaned to prevent the contamination of food by living and non-living contaminants. Cleaning safely does not mean cleaning areas and surfaces you can see only. Cleaning safely means cleaning in places you cannot see.
High priority cleaning should be given to items that are frequently touched. Examples include water taps, door handles, light switches, etc. These should be cleaned more than once a day to prevent contamination and should be cleaned and allowed to dry naturally after every shift. Allowing items to dry naturally removes the chance of contamination by using towels.
A kitchen must be properly cleaned and sanitised. It is of utmost importance to follow the guides and instructions provided with the cleaning agents to prevent chemical contamination of food.
The following six-point cleaning plan is one example of achieving cleaning and food safety:
All kitchen work areas should be cleaned after each task.
You can find out all about essential food safety in eLearn Safety fully online food safety course Food Safety (HACCP) Level 1 which is based on the training criteria set down by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland’s Guide to Food Safety Training Level 1.
There are many additional resources available online that look into great detail of cleaning and food safety. For example SafeFood has plenty of very useful information on their website page titled Kitchen hygiene and food safety.
To keep the kitchen clean, always ensure the following:
Never store chemicals in the same area as food. If food gets contaminated, it can seriously harm all that consume contaminated food.
Please remember – it is a legal requirement that staff who are involved in a food environment are trained and/or supervised commensurate with their work activity!
Myelearnsafety offers fully online Food Safety (HACCP) courses.
To find out more, please check our Courses page.
Alternatively, should you need any additional information, please do not hesitate to let us know via email info@elearn.ie
Unwitting food poisoning is the result of people being unaware of basic food safety. It is usually brought on by implementing unsafe practices, taking chances and common misconceptions. Examples of common misconceptions are washing raw chicken before cooking or smelling food to make sure it’s not gone off.
Food poisoning is any disease of an infectious or toxic nature caused by the consumption of food or water. This includes all food and waterborne illness regardless of symptoms. They usually appear within 1 to 72 hours after eating contaminated or poisonous food. You can read some additional information about food poisoning in our blog entry Food Poisoning from 10th February 2023.
Most cases of food poisoning are the result of people not working properly in the kitchen. Another often cause is not paying proper attention to the delivery and storage of food. This is the case when we talk about food handling at home and in a food business.
By nature most food poisoning is unwitting food poisoning. However, it is most certainly always preventable. This is why training and education are important. To ensure you know how to handle food safely we recommend completing one of eLearn Safety online Food Safety courses. The Food Safety (HACCP) Level 1 is a good starting point.
There are many causes of food poisoning, all of which are avoidable. The most common causes are:
As Matthew Gilmour, a Research Scientist and Director of the Food Safety Research Network at Quadram Institute in a report published on RTE (originally published by The Conversation) points out – small routine things, such as ‘sniff test’ might facilitate unwitting food poisoning. We all usually do it, as an unconscious reaction, in a hope to detect any issues with the stored food. However, most food poisoning microbes have no smell. In addition, microbes like Listeria and Salmonella are going to be near impossible to pick up with the sniff test.
As Dr. Gilmour points out “energies are best spent on storing [food] at the right temperature and cooking them for the right amount of time, rather than trusting […] nose to sniff out a pathogen”.
Please remember – it is a legal requirement that staff who are involved in a food environment are trained and/or supervised commensurate with their work activity!
Myelearnsafety offers fully online Food Safety (HACCP) courses.
To find out more, please check our Courses page.
Alternatively, should you need any additional information, please do not hesitate to let us know via email info@elearn.ie
