HOW TO PREVENT FOOD POISONING?

According to World Health Organization (WHO), there are 1 out of 10 people in the world fall ill after eating contaminated food and about 420 thousand people die every year due to food borne disease.  Food poisoning can be dreadful.  People have abdomen cramp, fever, vomit, diarrhea and other signs when they have food poisoning.  And when food poisoning severity is higher, the patient could lose their life. Thus, food handlers play important roles to prevent food contamination.      

Personal Hygiene and behaviour of food handlers  

Food handler with poor personal hygiene could contaminate food. Possess long finger nails, wearing accessories, applying cosmetic, not wearing proper attire, having flu, have wound in hands and so on are some poor personal hygiene that food handlers shouldn’t have / do while they are preparing or serving food. Besides, the mis-behaviour of food handlers such as tasting food with fingers, touching food with bare hands, coughing directly to food, smoking and digging nose while serving food would also resulting food contamination. Therefore, food handlers must learn to practice good personal hygiene and food handling to avoid food contamination. 

Raw food inspection

Food handlers must use fresh and hygiene raw material to cook or process into product.  Good quality of raw material does not have much contaminant and so it reduces the possibility of contamination or bacterial growth on food.  Food handlers must check the quality of every incoming raw material or during procurement.  Only good quality of raw material can be used to cook / process food.  Food handler also need to check the can food properly before procurement. Do not use can food with dirty and corrosion on the can surface, not to use the tented and swelling can as those are the signs of can food contamination.

Cleanliness of equipment

Equipment should be checked if there are damages, crevices and crack. Food handlers should always use good condition equipment in order to avoid the accumulation of contaminant which encourage the growth of bacteria.  The broken pieces of equipment might also contaminate the food and hurt the internal organs when customer accidentally swallow the physical contaminant. 

Avoid cross contamination

Cross contamination occurs when there is contaminant, usually bacteria transfer from one object / food to another. Food handler could observe if it occurred during handling food. For instance, the handling for raw and cooked food in the same equipment set, or the handling of high-risk food (meat and seafood) and other food in the same set of equipment, chemical are mis-place adjacent to food etc. When there is a possibility of cross contamination, food handler should separate the handling or food from another.    

 

Food temperature and storage

When food temperature is in between 5 – 63oC, the bacteria in the food could multiply in every 20-30 minutes. The survival of bacteria in long period would resulting the excretion of toxin which would spoil the food.  Thus, food handlers should plan the food handling properly, such as how to defrost, when to cook, where to keep, how to store, when to deliver, how to deliver and so on.       

    

Prevention of pest and animals 

Pest and animals bring varies of contaminants, including bacteria. Those contaminants would contaminate premise, equipment and food.  Thus, food handlers should prevent pest and animals from entering the food premise.  Food handlers should always make sure the premise is clean so that there is no “food” to attract the pest and animals.   

Use clean water source

Food handlers to use clean water source (from government water).  It is better that the incoming water is passing through a filtration system so that it is save and free from hazardous bacteria. Contaminated or untreated water contains various of bacteria, heavy metals and chemical that could contaminate the food.

Waste management 

The food handler team should make sure the waste is managed well so that there is no waste in or outside of premise that could attract pest and animals. I was once passed by a night market and saw food waste is thrown on the floor. Even the waste is kept into plastic bag, but very quickly the plastic bag is teared by dogs as the sting smell attracts the animal. The sting smell could also attract pest like mouse and giant lizards. 

The correct food handling practice helps food business owners to maintain the business operation.  When every food handler is competent in food handling, the food safety measures would be maintained and business owners would have a peace of mind every day and focus on the food business.