When a restaurant or an organization that has to deal with food is giving their employees food safety training, sometimes they are not going to give them all t he information that they need to know.  Here are some of the most important items to include when giving employees food safety training.

Handling of Food

The first thing that everyone who is receiving food safety training should learn about is handling of the food. They should know the procedures, know how to tell whether or not food is bad, and the point when a food needs to be disposed of.  This is one of the most important aspects of food safety training and something that everyone should know.

Storage of Food

The second thing that people who are in food safety training needs to know about is the proper storage of food. This is especially important for people who are cooking and preparing the food, who close up the restaurant or establishment, and those who are receiving the food deliveries.  They need to know how the food needs to be stored in order to be healthy and safe for consumption.

Cleaning

The third thing that people who are in food safety training need to know about is cleaning procedures.  In order for food to be safe to eat, the utensils and the surfaces that they the food is prepared on has to be cleaned properly and there needs to be a lot of attention paid to detail.

Cross contamination

The final thing that people in food safety training need to learn about is cross contamination. Cross contamination means that you are using the same utensils between different kinds of meats and vegetables.    This is one of the most common causes of illness from foods, because bacteria from meat get on the vegetables and make people sick, as vegetables are often not cooked or they aren’t cooked to the degree that meat would be cooked.

These different things are very important to teach people when they are in food safety training. Although there may be other things that should be taught during food safety training, these are the most important parts of curriculum.  They are the ones that everyone needs to know about food safety, because the mistakes that people make in regards to those items lead to the most deadly problems in food service for both customers and employees.

Published first in September 2005 by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO for short), ISO 22000 will often be referred to as ISO 22000:2005. This standard is used by organizations down the food chain as being internationally recognised for food safety management system requirements. ISO 22000 and food safety basics are outlined and explained in this short report.

Nowadays you find that ISO 9001 certification is becoming more and more common in the small business sector. There are now many ‘off the shelf’ certification packages available to buy online making it much easier and more affordable for companies to do this. Basically your company no longer needs to pay for expensive consultants to be able to gain certification. You can even get free support from some of these internet services available until you achieve ISO 9001 certification.

The first step in the process of implementing a quality management system is to prepare a list of Customers and Potential Customers that meet the defined purpose of the organization.The next step in the process of implementing a quality management system is to communicate with customers and potential customers and determine their expectations and requirements. Senior Management should determine customer and potential customer requirements by market research and interviewing targeted customers to gain an understanding of their requirements.

Confirmation from the customer of the organisation’s understanding of their requirements should be obtained prior to proceeding.Based on the defined customer requirements and potential markets the Senior Management Team should determine the requirements for the quality management system and develop relevant policies.Based on the quality management system policies, senior management should then establish objectives for the company.

In order to achieve the predetermined objectives the senior management should then decide the quality management system processes that are required.The management team should then identify all quality management system process inputs and outputs, including suppliers and customers.For example the quality management system process product realisation could have inputs from planning, training, maintenance and IT Systems, and outputs to distribution, customer and measurement and monitoring.

Next the senior management team should define and describe the quality management system processes and their interaction, considering the supplier and customer of each process, inputs and outputs of each process, which processes are interacting, the timing and sequence of the processes, the effectiveness and efficiency of the sequence.A flowchart is an easy way to show the sequence of processes and their interactions.Next the individual roles and responsibilities for ensuring the implementation, maintenance and improvement of each quality management system process should be defined. E.g. the Planning Manager would normally be the planning process owner with responsibility in the quality management system would be for implementing, maintaining and improving the planning process and interacting effectively with sales and production processes.The Planning Manager objectives should be in line with quality management system objectives for example 100% Accurate Production Plan, 100% Order Completion, and less than 1% Wastage.Senior management should establish a team with members from each process to oversee the quality management system.

The next stage of implementing the quality management system is to assess each process and determine and the most appropriate way of managing them and if they are to be documented.

Graphical representations, written instructions, checklists, flow charts and electronic methods can be used to define the quality management system process. The process management team should then undertake a project implementing the quality management system processes and their activities as planned that including communication, awareness, training, change management, management involvement and review activities.

Monitoring and measuring should be applied to the quality management system processes.Measurement is a powerful management and quality management system improvement tool, measure or monitor to determine the effectiveness and efficiency of the quality management system process, taking into account such factors as conformity with requirements, customer satisfaction, supplier performance, on time delivery, waste, process costs, incident frequency. At this stage there should be corrective and preventative actions taken as per the documented quality management system procedure. This should include the identification and elimination of the root causes and potential causes of the problems such as defects or lack of adequate process controls.

Improvement opportunities for the quality management system based on the results of the analysis of process information should be determined at this stage.Finally, confirm that the characteristics of the quality management system processes are consistent with the purpose of your organisation.

The system will automatically update your annual report so you can monitor complaints in a year to date format again with colour coded alerts.

We have used this template to monitor complaint levels for many years and have been very successful in reducing complaint levels.

 FREE ANNUAL COMPLAINTS ANALYSER