Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
development of a safe handling brochure, consumers advised that the words, “always”
be added to the advice to refrigerate leftovers immediately, because the participants
knew people who stored melons and other cut fruit at room temperature (Li- Cohen
and Bruhn 2002 ).
Food-Service Workers Handling Practices That
Affect Produce Safety
Safe food handling in the food-service sector may be expected to exceed handling in
the home setting. McElroy and Cutter (2004) found that 86% of food-service workers
indicated they are moderately likely to follow food safety techniques prior to training
and 93% are very likely to follow these techniques after adequate training. In reality,
risky practices by food safety workers are commonly reported (Green and others
2005). More than half of respondents (60%) indicated that while at work, they did not
always wear gloves while touching RTE food, 23-33% did not always wash their
hands or change their gloves between handling raw meat and RTE foods, and 5% said
they had worked while sick with vomiting or diarrhea. Food-service workers have
frequently been implicated in the spread of foodborne disease by the consumption of
raw produce the food-service workers could have accidentally contaminated (Todd
and others 2007).
The annual food safety audit in Los Angeles County by The Steritech Group (2004)
found that the results of restaurant inspections were predictive of foodborne illness
investigations. Those factors signifi cantly associated with foodborne illness include
incorrect storage of food, reuse of food, lack of employee hand washing, lack of
thermometers to monitor and control temperature, and the occurrence of any food-
protection violations.
In 2003, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) collected data from site
visits to over 900 establishments representing nine distinct facility types, including
restaurants, institutional food-service operations, and retail food stores (FDA 2004).
Direct observations of produce-handling practices were supplemented with informa-
tion gained from discussions with management and food workers and were used to
document the establishments' compliance status based on provisions in the 1997 Food
Code (FDA 1997). Failure to control product holding temperatures (49%), poor per-
sonal hygiene (22%), use of contaminated equipment/failure to protect food-handling
equipment from contamination (20%), and risk of potential chemical contamination
(13%) were the risk factors found to be most often out of compliance with the 1997
Food Code.
For the improper holding time and temperature risk factor, 70% of the observations
were not at or below 5 °C for produce items classifi ed as
potentially hazardous foods
(PHF)
. Holding PHFs at or below 5 °C is critical to preventing the potential growth
of human pathogens, which may rapidly proliferate on inadequately refrigerated PHFs.
Date marking of refrigerated RTE food is also an important component of any food
safety system, and it is designed to promote proper food rotation and limit the potential
growth of
Listeria monocytogenes
during cold storage. However, appropriate date
marking of RTE, PHF produce items made on-site did not occur in 34% of the
observations.
