5 Reasons You Need Food Safety Supervisor Training
All of you in the food industry know that your very business depends on the customers that purchase your food and your services. Much of your business depends on repeat customers and while you want your customers to tell their friends that your food is “To die for” you don’t want them actually dying or even feel like they are dying after sampling your wares.
So here are 5 reasons you need food safety supervisor training.
1. There are an estimated 5.4 million cases of food poisoning in Australia per year and 60% to 80% of food-borne illness arises from the food service industry. Food safety supervisor training just may help ensure that not a single one of 11,500 cases of food poisoning that occurs each day occurs at your place of business. Once word gets out that someone got deathly sick from food they consumed at a specific eating establishment or from a specific caterer, that business may as well close their doors because they are going to lose the trust of the public that their establishment is a safe place to eat.
2. Food safety supervisor training ensures that the person who is in charge of seeing that all the food in the establishment is stored, prepared, handled, and cooked safely knows how to safely do all those things themselves and knows how to pass that knowledge on to everyone else who works in the that particular food service location.
3. Food safety supervisor training is necessary so that new food safety inspectors can learn how to go about developing food safety plans and implementing them in a manner that everyone needs to know what they are supposed to do to ensure that all the food products in your establishment get handled properly from the time the delivery truck drops off the food items until it leaves in your customer’s stomach.
4. Food safety training will help your food supervisor know what the most common causes of food illnesses are and how to prevent the contamination that causes those illnesses. This training will also give them tips on what to look for to make sure that everyone in the establishment is following safe food handling guidelines and what he needs to do if someone in your business repeatedly ignores the safety guidelines and plans.
5. Food safety training will explain to your food safety supervisor and to their employer what the penalties are for serving unsafe food or food that could possibly be unsafe and what paperwork or other things may be needed to show that the food safety supervisor and every food worker in your business has the necessary training to safely handle food and that proper supervision is given to ensure that food is safely being handled and that your food preparation and service area is sanitary.
The bottom line is that your entire business not only rests on the way your food is cooked and presented to the client but, also on the fact that your food continues to be safe for them to eat without worry that they will become sick from the improper handling or food preparation.
Important food safety supervisor information – hazards of bacteria
If you are a food safety supervisor, you will need to do your food safety supervisor training. This food safety training will qualify you to handle food as well as manage other food handlers in commercial settings.
A food safety supervisor needs to understand food hazards, including bacteria. Did you know that bacteria are the most common cause of food poisoning? While some bacteria are actually beneficial, others can cause food to go off, known as spoilage bacteria. Bacteria are found everywhere. In fact there is not a place on Earth where bacteria are not found.
Bacteria are very small living organisms known as micro-organisms. They are made up of a single cell and a cell membrane. Look at your hands: you will not be able to tell that right now there are over one million bacteria on them.
More bacteria mean greater risk. Controlling the number of bacteria, particularly harmful bacteria, is the first step in preventing serious illness from contamination. Your food safety supervisor training will equip you with the knowledge do this.
Whatever their shape or size, all bacteria live, grow and multiply. They live and grow by absorbing their food and water through their membrane and excreting their waste products back through this membrane.
Sometimes, the bacteria themselves are toxic but it’s also the process of growing and the waste they produce that cause food poisoning and food spoilage.
Bacteria need specific conditions to live grow and multiply. In the right conditions, bacteria will grow very quickly and can divide into 2 in about 15 minutes.
Without water, bacteria stop growing and can die. In fact bacteria themselves are made up of mostly water.
Have you ever wondered why dried & salted foods were common before refrigeration? Salting removes moisture through a process called osmosis, creating an environment in which bacteria cannot survive.
Living things need protein. Without a food source such as protein, bacteria cannot survive.
Can you guess which foods bacteria will thrive in? Moist foods, with a neutral pH that are high in protein. These are potentially hazardous foods because bacteria can live, grow and multiply to dangerous numbers.
Foods that have the right conditions to support bacterial growth and that may contain harmful or pathogenic bacteria are termed ‘high risk foods’.
High-risk foods include:
Seafood, meat and small goods, poultry, dairy and egg-based foods, soups, stock and sauces, fruits (including rockmelon, watermelon, blueberries and fruit salad), pre-made salads, pate and soft cheeses, ice-cream, cooked rice and pasta.
Consider this: it can take as little as 4 and half hours for 10 bacteria to multiply into over 1.3 million in ideal conditions. With potentially millions of bacteria on dirty hands alone, and one thousand on a single hair, food left uncovered or unrefrigerated is easily spoiled or contaminated by bacteria.
Did you know that the bacteria in milk can survive pasteurisation and still cause a carton of unopened milk to go off?
For further important food safety information, supervisors should complete their food safety supervisor training online to meet their compliance training obligations.
