The lurking dangers of food contamination
When I started my apprenticeship, I already had a very small idea about the importance of food savety in a Commercial kitchen. There is no difference between a commercial kitchen and a domestic kitchen when it comes to your food safety.
So what is food health and safety? It is a set of rules how to keep, treat and store foods in a kitchen. Designed to keep the customer save when he or her consumes your food. When a restaurant or hotel including every food outlet serves food to the public, they have to follow the licensing laws of how to work with food and how to serve food. Food poisoning can be very nasty and in some cases deadly.
The same licensing laws exist for bakeries, butchers, dairy farms and outlets, super markets, delicatessa outlets and the like. All those different industries have their own licensing laws on food health and safety.
One of the first rules we had to learn as chefs apprentices
When I started my apprenticeship back in 1978, we had to go for one day a week to trades school. We had also internal courses or in house courses by the company who was running the Hotel. The hotel I made my apprenticeship was Holiday Inn and Mövenpick. Mövenpick was and still is a Swiss company who specialises in a sertain hospitality concept which is a very high standard. They also use a franchising method running hotels and resorts around the World. You may know them also as Icecream makers, with amazing icecreams sold everywhere in the World. So for us apprentices, Mövenpick had internal cooking classes. Chefs Apprentices in Switzerland also finished the chefs apprenticeship as the best in the nation, due to the fact, that Mövenpick trained us independently from the Trade school.
Before we where allowed to handle food, we had to go through a training on the licensing laws of food health and safety. That makes sense as one has to know how to handle food before we work with food in a commercial environment.
The second day of my apprenticeship was a training day. We where 3 first year apprentices, starting on the same day. One that second day, us 3 apprentices had to go through a training session with our Sous Chef on food health and safety. The training took place in the hotel. In the morning, we had to go through the theoretical part and i the afternoon, we where going through the kitchens and we had to assess if the foods where handled properly, if the refrigerators where clean, the temperatures right and the food stored inside the refrigerators where kept the way it should be. Also personal hygene like washing your hand regular, wearing the right clothing, using latex gloves for handling sertain foods, wearing a chefs hat, to avoid hair in the food, the girls would have to wear a hair net as well, how to use the chopping boards and how to clean them, how to keep the surfaces clean and how to keep a kitchen clean, refrigerator temperatures and how to store food and the list goes on.
Back in 1978, we still used wooden chopping boards. Today in 2016 this is no no. The rules have changed dramatically since 1978.
A food poisioning case can have grave consequences for a hotel or restaurant. Most countries Worldwide have a deparment of health. Does departments have inspectors, visiting restaurants, hotels and food outlets to check, if the food health and safety is been enfoced and kept up to date. Untfortunately a lot of restaurants, food outlets and hotels do not implement and practise food health and safety, resulting a customer ends up in hospital with a food poisoning. That can result in closure of the business and a financial loss including having to pay for the medical treatment of the customer. The health department does check restaurants and hotels including all sorts of food outlets. But it is impossible for the health department to check them all. A health inspector can also order the closure of a premise deemed unsafe to operate and causing a danger to the general public.
Today in 2016, in my country of residence which is Australia, food health and safety is paramount and you need to hold a certificate that you had the proper traing in food handling. You can not work as a chef in charge without a food handlers certificate.
The health inspector is here!! Just dropped in for a visit!
I had my first experience with a food health inspector when I was in my chefs apprenticeship. It was a day like any other, working in the main kitchen, when the health food inspector just walked into the kitchen. One of the chefs greeted him and he explained to the chef, that he was here to do a food safety audit in the kitchen.
There are three reasons why a healt inspector is going to walk into a premise by surprise.
1) Customers of a restaurant or hotel ring up the health department complaining about a visit to a restaurant or hotel and feeling ill afterwards.
2) A normal random check on a restaurant or hotel that has just opened the doors to the public or a routine check.
3) A big event is about going to take place like: Olympics, sports events or a big event where there is a lot of people attending. All restaurants and hotels in the immediate area may be checked by the health department prior to the event.
I knew when the health inspector walked in on us out of the blue, that our kitchen was fine. The inspector went through the kitchen, checked the refrigerators, some of the kitchen appliances, pots and pans, some cooking utensils, the dry store area, the chemical storage area and the work benches surfaces. It was just a routine check and the inspector was satisfied how the kitchen was kept and run.
If you like to know more about food health and safety, check out YouTube and type in " Kitchen Nightmares by Gordon Ramsay ". You will see a lot of great examples of restaurants who did not stick to a food and health safety plan and the business was on the brink of financial disaster.
If you are a Chef or thinking of becoming a Chef, get in touch with your health department and see if they run classes in save food handling. A certificate in that field is handy to have as a chef and it will get you in the door easier for a job you applied to.
WARNING: If you are working in a kitchen and they do not follow a food health and safety plan, I strongly advise you to either bring up the subject to your superior and if ignored, quit your job. That is a sign, that they do not care about their customers! In the hospitality industry, bad news go around like a wild fire and you don't want your name in it!
Next week I talk about the classes we apprentices enjoyed while we where doing our Chef's training with the Company Mövenpick. Take care, love fife and enjoy fine foods.
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