Do you know how to reduce or prevent foodborne illnesses?
Studies show that over 48 million Americans experience foodborne illness every year. Some of the most common causes of food poisoning include improper storage, cooking, and microbes.
As a restaurant owner, you should always strive to protect your patrons.
To do this, you need to observe a food safety program in your restaurant. Want to know what causes food poisoning and how to prevent it? Read on to learn food safety and different foodborne illness examples.
Learn the Basics: What Is Food Poisoning?
Have you ever felt sick after eating? Food poisoning occurs when you consume contaminated food or drink. Although most foodborne illnesses are mild and disappear without treatment, some get hospitalized.
Here are some foodborne illness examples to look out for.
Escherichia Coli
Severe symptoms could be a sign of Escherichia coli. E. coli is a pathogen found in raw produce, undercooked beef, or untreated water.
To help prevent this, staff must wash hands before, during, and after preparing meals. It is also best to use a clean, sanitized and calibrated food thermometer to ensure food reaches a safe internal temperature.
Salmonella
Studies show that over 1.35 million Salmonella infections occur in the US every year. Salmonella can result from unclean produce, undercooked meat, and unwashed hands. The most common symptoms include fever, stomach cramps, and diarrhea.
Norovirus
Norovirus is notorious for being highly contagious. Touching contaminated surfaces, food, water, or not staying home when you have certain symptoms can lead to this nasty stomach bug.
Train Staff
Nothing is more effective than giving proper employee training to prevent foodborne illness. If a customer gets food poisoning, the customer and the law can hold your restaurant liable. With this, adopt a training program where employees learn about proper food handling.
Paster Training/ Cenza offers food safety courses discussing risks and prevention of food illnesses. Further, some training programs cover broader scopes of food safety. You can opt to make this a part of your onboarding process and require it for new employees.
Prevent Cross-Contamination
Pathogens can spread fast, and when handling food, you want to avoid this as much as possible. On average, hands carry about 3,200 different germs. Preparing food with dirty hands or using dirty ingredients can cause food poisoning.
To serve safe and clean food, you must keep everything in the restaurant clean and sanitized. You must practice effective food safety measures to prevent cross-contamination.
Go Beyond Cleaning
Sanitizing an area reduces harmful pathogens from spreading. Thus, include practicing proper sanitation in your food safety program.
Cleaning removes visible dirt and debris from the surface level. If you want to reduce pathogens to a safe level, use a chemical agent to sanitize. There are different sanitizers and you need to know which one to use and how to properly test the use concentration. When sanitizing, you need to leave a chemical treatment in contact with the item your already cleaned for a certain amount of time in order to reduce/kill the pathogens.
Reducing Foodborne Illness Examples in Restaurants
Here are some of the most common foodborne illness examples. Now you know how to prevent restaurant foodborne illnesses. Implementing and practicing sound food safety procedures helps to protect your customers welfare and develops a good reputation for the business.
Do you want to protect your restaurant and your customers? That's where we come in. To know more about food safety, you can contact us at Paster Training/ Cenza for different courses and programs.