If you're serving food, safety should be your top priority. You should ensure that whoever is eating your food will not get sick from what you serve them. It may take extra steps to prevent foodborne illness, but it's well worth it.
Whether you're opening a restaurant, serving at a fair, or hosting people at your home, knowing the right prevention techniques is essential. Here are a few ways you can prevent food safety hazards in your kitchen.
Know and Eliminate the Common Causes
One of the best food safety hazard prevention tips you can follow is to eliminate any common causes before they have the potential to pose an issue.
For example, contaminated water can cause foodborne illness. Ensuring that you have clean water will go a long way in your kitchen. Another common cause is cross-contamination during food preparation.
If you take the time to initially prevent or eliminate these and other common causes, you can save yourself a future headache.
Temperature Control is Key
Every ingredient has a temperature it must stay at to ensure it's safe to consume. Without temperature control, food may start to rot or have harmful microbial growth.
Storing all food at the proper temperature is a must, which often means refrigerating at a specific temperature.
Stay on Top of Suppliers
Your food will only be as good as the source provides. The raw ingredients you receive should have a minimum standard, no matter the manufacturer or supplier.
Be sure to conduct reviews to ensure food suppliers are doing their part to maintain food safety, including proper refrigeration and hygiene standards.
Maintain High Personal Hygiene Standards
A clean kitchen won't matter if you never take care of your hygiene. Bodily fluids can be the cause of a variety of infectious diseases and illnesses. You can bring disease and illness into an otherwise clean kitchen with poor hygiene.
Maintain high standards by enforcing strict guidelines. These include hand washing, hairnets, and not preparing food when sick.
Follow Proper Sanitation Guidelines
No one wants to eat food out of a dirty establishment, and that doesn't only mean the kitchen. Your kitchen may be spotless, but if other areas are grimy, you may still be bringing in contaminants from other areas.
Your food safety guidelines should require your bathrooms, breakrooms, locker rooms, and dining areas to all be as spotless as where you prepare food.
Have a Food Safety Plan
A food safety plan assesses the risks and methods of your kitchen. Here is where you'll go through your typical process and activities to identify any potential or current hazards.
Once you know what risks you're dealing with, you can develop a comprehensive plan and systemic approach to maintaining food safety guidelines.
Prevent Food Safety Hazards Everywhere
Food poisoning can be a serious illness. While most cases may experience some discomfort and the night spent in the bathroom, more serious cases can lead to hospitalization or even death.
And what's most unfortunate is that in most foodborne illness situations, food safety hazards could be prevented. That's why it's important to pay extra attention to the way you're running your kitchen.
If you're looking for more information and training on food safety, reach out to our experts for courses, training, and consulting.