Are you wearing correct clothing while handling food?

Food Handlers should wear appropriate clothing during handling food. As to avoid contamination from themselves into food, food handlers should wear clean, suitable and proper clothing.  Basically, every clothing should be in light-colour so that they are easy to be seen if dirty.  So, what are the suggested clothing? Here you go.  

Hair Strainer is worn to prevent hair from dropping into food.  Cap is fine but not good enough as there are hair (especially ladies) and sideburns not being covered.  Facemask is essential in high quality food processing such as in a food processing plant. Wearing facemask could prevent bacteria from mouth and nose contaminating the food.  Uniform / cloth WITHOUT POCKET and buttons only could be worn while handling food.  This is to ensure that no contamination from pocket to the food via hands.  Apron WITHOUT POCKET is worn for preventing dirts from the cloth to contaminate the food.  Pants should be long.  Food Handlers are not allowed to wear skirt while handling food.  Shoe / Boots only to be worn in handling food.  If you are working in wet area, such as seafood processing plant, boots should be your choice. 

Hair strainer, facemask, apron and boots should not be worn other than in food premises and shall be kept in a suitable cupboard or locker when not in used (i.e., when food handler is visiting toilet).  In a processing plant, supervisor / Quality Control Manager should make sure that all clothing are to be worn inside the processing plant only.

Clean clothing is one of the important element to ensure food hygiene.  Food handlers should implement it every day.