Saturday, March 10, 2018

March 2018: Some lesser known food safety guidelines

While most of us in the industry are familiar with the temperature danger zone and the need to heat and cool foods properly, there are some potentially serious practices, not widely known and often missed on state health inspections.  Please keep in mind these rules apply specifically to the State of Florida under the 2009 FDA food code.  

1) Unpackaged frozen foods:  In the freezer, when a food is frozen solid, and in it's original, unsealed packaging, it does not matter where the food is stored.  For instance, frozen bread can be stored under frozen raw chicken. Now, here is the catch.  Once that food is opened from it's original sealed packaging, it must be stored as if it is thawed, (top to bottom) Ready to eat, unwashed produce, raw seafood, raw beef, raw pork, ground beef, ground pork, poultry.  I see this mistake a lot more commonly in line freezers where food is unpackaged for quick cooking, but also in walk in freezers where product is portioned and frozen.  For this reason, we always recommend to store your food, thawed or frozen, according to thawed product guidelines.

2) Reduced Oxygen Packaging:  Botulism is an extremely rare and deadly food borne illness caused by the bacteria, Clostridium botulinum.  Although rare, botulism is a hearty organism, not easily killed by heat or extreme conditions, AND it is anaerobic, which means it can live without oxygen and thrives in a low oxygen environment.  Improperly sealed cans and jars can be a source, hence the importance of undented cans and sealed jars.  One other trait of botulism is that it does well at refrigerated temperatures. Most food borne bacteria will not grow under normal refrigeration, C. botulinum does well between 38-41°.  While most of you know about cans and jars, you may not be aware of the danger with reduced oxygen packaging, particularly with fish.  Some fish, sealed in reduced oxygen packaging and frozen, must be removed from this sealed packaging BEFORE thawing.  Luckily for us, there is an easy way to kill this dangerous microorganism, expose it to oxygen.  Oxygen is toxic to C. botulinum, simply unsealing the packaging will kill it.  This rule does not apply to all reduced oxygen packaging.  If an item must be removed from packaging prior to thawing, the container will normally say so. One important note: Although the bacteria is killed, opening the packaging will not remove any toxic waste the bacteria has produced, so it is best to discard food that has been stored improperly.   

3) Using time as a public health control for utensils.  If you are in the food service business, you understand the importance of sanitary food contact surfaces like knives, cutting boards, tongs, etc.  Like a surgeons tools, these surfaces must be sanitized to prevent cross-contamination.  Any of these surfaces can sit with food on them for up to four hours and remain safe.  This is called "time as a public health control."  This rule can be used for food contact surfaces like slicers and dicers, which are time consuming to clean, or for tongs and knives used very frequently.  You simply have to time mark the utensil for a time four hours from when you start using it (if you start at 12:00, mark the item 4:00).  The utensil has to be thoroughly cleaned and sanitized after four hours. Using this process allows you to use utensils repeatedly without having to stop and sanitize each time.  Important to note, this process can only be used with ready to eat foods, if the utensil is touching raw foods, there is a potential for cross contamination.  

If you have any further questions, write me at scott.brightgreen@att.net

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