Everyone who runs a food business needs to manage food safety properly, to make sure that the food they serve or sell is safe to eat. Effective food safety management involves:
- Thinking about your food preparation arrangements
Working out what could go wrong
- Putting procedures and controls in place to stop things going wrong
- Making regular checks to make sure the controls are working and are being followed.
Food safety law now says that you must be able to show how you produce safe food and have this written down.
Look at every stage of your business, from when the food is delivered to when you serve or sell it to your customer. Think about what food safety problems there could be at each stage. The most common food safety problems can be controlled by good food hygiene – the “4 Cs”, Cooking, Cleaning, Chilling and Cross Contamination. The food standards agency has designed its "Safer Food Better Business" food safety management toolkit to enable caterers to practically control hazards using the principles of the 4Cs. This can be found at:
Remember, different dishes will have different hazards associated with them, and will require different checks and controls. It is a good idea for you or your staff to keep records of your main safety checks. This will help you see if something is going wrong and put it right straight away. The records will also help you show environmental health officers what you are doing to ensure good food hygiene and obey the law. For example, you could make a note when you check the following things:
- Use By and Best Before dates on food
- Delivery temperatures
- Fridge and freezer temperatures
Useful sheets that you can use to record your food safety monitoring can be downloaded using the links below:.