Regulations

Food Safety

What is food safety?

Food safety is the prevention of food-borne illness through the careful handling of food. A food-borne illness is any ill health that someone suffers as a result of eating food that was contaminated, not properly prepared, or stored incorrectly.

If you work in the food industry you have a responsibility to practise good food safety methods so that the public will not become ill from eating contaminated food. The laws (statutes) that guard against unsafe food being sold are The Food Hygiene Regulations 1974,
The Food Act 1981 and The Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 and any subsequent amendments particularly July 1997 amendment of the Food Act. A food business can be closed down for failing to follow the rules set out in these statutes.

What is contaminated food?

Contaminated food is food that has something in it, or on it, that shouldn’t be there. Examples of contaminants are:

Microbes or viruses: these are micro-organisms that you can’t see with the naked eye, such as bacteria, fungi, algae and protozoa. Diseases caused by viruses include colds, ‘flu and hepatitis. Most tummy bugs are thought to be caused by viruses. Viruses that affect humans cannot grow on food but they can survive on its surface and be transferred to other people

Chemicals contaminants: Chemicals used for cleaning or for pest control can also make people very ill. You should use these carefully and store them away from food. Produce may arrive with traces of pesticides on it. Metals such as aluminium, lead and mercury are toxic if they enter food. Don’t use mercury thermometers with food and don’t store acidic foods in aluminium or cast iron containers.

Natural toxins: these can be formed when food is not stored correctly. For example, potatoes go green and become unsafe to eat (they develop toxins called glycoalkaloids) when they are exposed to too much light.

Physical contaminants: this refers to foreign objects in food, for example pieces of metal or glass, which can cause a serious injury if swallowed. Other foreign objects are hair, fingernails, nail varnish and sticking plasters.

Other food dangers: some quite ordinary foods and food additives are toxic to some people because they produce severe allergic reactions. That is why the correct labelling of food is a safety issue. See Food Code (link here) for more information on labelling requirements. Correct food labelling is important because:

people have a right to know what they are eating
some ordinary foods or food additives (e.g. peanuts or the gluten found in wheat products) can be very dangerous, or even fatal, to some people.

Why is personal hygiene so important?

Food handlers are actually one of the main sources of food contamination. Everyone carries microbes on their skin, under their nails and in their hair.

Skin wounds or infections are a serious threat to food safety and must be covered.

A sick food handler is a hazard to others. Diarrhoea and/or vomiting, the flu, a bad cold or a sinus infection, or a serious skin infection (especially one that is discharging pus) are all dangerous to others and food should not be handled by someone with any of these symptoms. It is actually against the law to work with food if you are experiencing diarrhoea and/or vomiting. Doing so is an offence under
The Food Regulations 1974 and The Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992.

It is important when handling food to wash your hands thoroughly and clean under your nails after doing anything that might contaminate them. Activities such as eating, smoking or nose blowing are unhygienic because they contaminate hands with microbes from your nose and mouth. Staphylococcus aureus, which often lives in noses without causing harm, can cause food poisoning if it enters food and grows there.

Going to the toilet will contaminate your hands with bacteria from your gut (faecal bacteria). If you wear an apron take it off before entering the toilets and put it back on again after you have washed your hands.

Other activities (or bad habits) that will contaminate hands with bacteria from the body are touching your nose, mouth, ears or hair, biting your nails or scratching. Most of us do these things many times during the day, often without thinking about them.

Money and rubbish will contaminate your hands with microbes, dirt and possibly all kinds of things that you don’t even know about! Either wash your hands every time you handle money or use clean gloves for handling the food.

If you use any chemicals at work, wash your hands immediately after handling them because you could leave traces of the chemical - which may be very poisonous - on everything else you touch.

Hands must be washed after handling raw meat, fish or chicken or any other food that may be contaminated with microbes.

If you work with produce you probably only handle uncooked fruits and vegetables, and perhaps plants and flowers. Make sure that you wash your hands:

after handling vegetables with soil on them (as the soil will contain microbes)
after handling plants and flowers (which may have soil or pesticides on them)
before handling ready-to-eat products such as salads (because people generally don’t wash or cook these before eating them)
before handling fruit that doesn’t need peeling (because many people, perhaps most people, don’t wash this before eating it either).

What is cross contamination?

Cross contamination is the transfer of microbes (or chemicals, or physical contaminants) from one food to another. Foods don’t need to come into direct contact to contaminate one another. The contamination can be spread via surfaces, utensils, or anything else that touches the contaminated food and then the “clean” food.

The foods most likely to be contaminated and so act as a source of contamination for other products are raw meat, chicken, fish and shellfish. Raw chicken should be treated as a serious hazard because many live birds carry disease-causing microbes in their guts which spread to the skin during processing. Also be careful with eggs as their shells may be contaminated with chicken droppings or feathers (depending on the source).

Fresh produce foods you have to be most careful with, because they can spread infections, are vegetables (e.g. potatoes, kumara) that have dirt on them. The dirt almost certainly contains microbes because soil is the natural home of many bacteria and fungi.

To prevent cross contamination:

Keep separate chopping boards for raw and ready-to-eat foods (or clean and sanitise the boards between uses).

Clean and sanitise surfaces that have been touched by foods likely to contain disease-causing micro-organisms (e.g. raw meat, fish or poultry, vegetables with soil on them).

Always use clean utensils, and never use the same utensil on raw and then cooked food. For example, if you have put meat into a pan (or turned it over) with a pair of tongs you must not use the same pair of tongs to remove the cooked meat from the pan.

Don’t touch food, especially ready-to-eat food, with your bare hands unless necessary. Wash your hands well before performing any task that does require you to use your hands.

Wash your hands immediately after handling raw meat, fish or chicken. Sanitise any surface you may have touched before you washed your

What is the difference between cleaning and sanitising?

Cleaning removes visible dirt from a surface. It does not kill microbes, but it helps to control them because it physically removes their food source (microbes can live on the traces of food waste found on uncleaned surfaces). A good cleaning job should also remove any excess moisture, another essential for microbes.

Sanitisingdoes kill microbes, and may also clean (e.g. a dishwasher cleans and sanitises). However, as a general rule, you should clean first and then sanitise. Heat may be used to sanitise utensils, but the sanitisation of a surface is almost always through the use of a chemical.

What are high risk foods?

High risk foods are those that can support the growth of disease-causing microbes, i.e. they are likely to make people sick if they are not handled carefully. These foods are high in free moisture and spoil easily; most need to be stored refrigerated or frozen.

Examples of high risk foods are meat, fish or shellfish, chicken, eggs, milk, cream, cooked cereals, sauces, salads, fresh cut produce, cooked vegetables, stocks and soups.

High risk foods need to be stored at the correct temperature. A safe temperature is colder than 4oC or hotter than 60oC. The temperature range between 4 and 60oC is called the danger zone. Food poisoning bacteria are able to multiply in the danger zone, so you must not leave high risk foods in this temperature range for any longer than necessary.

What is HACCP?

HACCP, or hazards analysis and critical control point, is a system of controls designed keep food safe at every point in the production process. It is based on a series of seven principles that focus on hazard prevention at every stage of food production. Many food production companies have food safety programmes based on HACCP and approved by the Ministry of Health.

What causes food spoilage?

Food spoils, or goes off, because of attack by micro-organisms, the actions of enzymes, chemical oxidation, or physical damage.

Some common signs of food spoilage are off-odours (bacteria, fungi, oxidation, enzymes), sliminess (bacteria, fungi), gas, e.g. small bubbles in soup; blown-up vacuum packs (bacteria, fungi), dark spots, furry patches and greasy-looking patches (bacteria, fungi), brown or soft patches (fungi, physical damage), changes in colour or texture (bacteria, fungi, oxidation, enzymes, physical damage).