Australian Food Safety Blog

Whatever restaurant in Melbourne you happen to be t: the 4 Mile Restaurant & Pub, Chez Michael, or the Heron Rock Bistro, food safety is important. Even if you have the most successful restaurant in all of Melbourne, all it takes is one food handling mistake to seriously damage your business.

As a restaurant, your business depends on two things. One is a loyal base of repeat customers. The other is the public’s perception of your restaurant. The restaurant business is to a large extent a reputation based business. One lawsuit related to improper food handling could ruin your establishment.

You make sure that proper food handling procedures are followed at your restaurant; you need to ensure that the staff in your kitchen is all well aware of the risks which a case of food poisoning presents to your business. You need to be prepared in the event that health inspectors should decide to drop by for a surprise visit as well. Employees who see improper food handling in your kitchen are also a risk, as they may decide to tell the world what they know if they lose their job.

There is more to all of this than just proper waste disposal and correctly storing food.

You must keep all food preparation areas clean always. This sounds easy but is often screwed up as well. Different cutting boards have to be use for cutting meat, vegetables and seafood. While some restaurants use stainless steel counters for this (they are very easy to clean), this tends to dull knives and can also give an off flavour to meats – harmless, but hardly desirable. Better than this are plastic cutting boards which are very sanitary compared to wooden cutting boards and are easy to clean as well. After each use, cutting boards must be washed very thoroughly. Bleach may be used – but be sure to rinse very well afterwards if you are using bleach to clean your cutting boards.

Make sure all utensils are washed after each meal preparation in which they are used.

To ensure that all harmful bacteria have been killed, meats have to be cooked to a minimum internal temperature – 69 degrees for pork and red meats, 74 degrees for seafood. Even if a customer orders a rare steak, it must be cooked to 69 degrees for at least 15 seconds to reduce the risk of food poisoning. If you have any meats which are not definitely fresh, then you must make sure to prepare them very well done.

Raw foods like sushi call for extreme caution in their preparation. Your kitchen must be perfectly clean, as must your staff. Disposable gloves and hair coverings are needed and the preparation area must be spotless. You should throw away any sushi which is not perfectly fresh – and you should be very certain of the quality of your supplies for sushi.

It boggles the mind how many kitchen workers do not wash their hands in between preparing meals, even after handling raw meats. Between meal preparation hand washing is a must and washing one’s hands in between preparing different foods (switching from meat to vegetables, for instance) is, to say the least, a good idea.

By enforcing a strict kitchen sanitation and food handling program, you will be protecting the interests of your customers as well as those of your restaurant.

The population of germs and pathogens has increased to quite an extent these days. Every other day, one gets to hear of new diseases and ailments which were never heard of in the earlier days. Part of the problem can be attributed to pollution and unhealthy and unhygienic habits. It’s quite a paradox that despite the great advancements in the fields of medicine and science, the germs are thriving! However, since we all know that germs can cause great problems and most of them enter from the kitchen or food, we need to have good food preparation habits.

Here are some of the ways that germs can grow from bad food preparation and clean up habits and what to do about them:

• We invariably tend to do different things every day and as a result come in contact with all kinds of germs which stay on our hands. These germs may not be able to infect us at the time, but they may be able to get into food and cause trouble. Hence make it a rule that every time before you enter the kitchen, you wash your hands with hot soapy water.

• Even in the kitchen, when you touch the dustbin or do any such cleaning, you need to wash your hands before you can touch anything related to the food.

• Anytime you change a diaper, use the bathroom, play with your pet, sneeze or blow your nose or even smoke, you need to wash your hands before touching anything even remotely related with food.

• Generally while they are cooking, people tend to touch their hair or even mouth and nose. Refrain from doing that since you may end up contaminating the food with germs.

• Generally, these days people like wearing rubber gloves in the kitchen especially if they have some kind of would or cut in their hand. This prevents the germs in the wound from getting into the food.

• Some people like to stir the food and taste it with the same spoon. This can lead to a lot of diseases since you are contaminating the spoon with your saliva which can cause problems for other people. Hence, if you want to taste the food, then use a separate spoon which should not be put back into the food once you have used it for tasting.

• The used dishes should be washed with hot soapy water. When you see the water getting dirty, and then change it. Moreover, it’s better to use a drying rack to dry the dishes since if you wipe them with the same towel it may cause more germ related problems. Moreover, keep them in a clean dry place where the bugs and flies can’t reach them.

• Cutting boards are also a great breeding ground for germs. Often the blood from the meat may contain germs which can cause some scary diseases. Hence make sure that you clean the cutting boards and counters thoroughly.

Remember that each disease has an incubation period. Hence, even if you don’t see any symptoms, it doesn’t mean that the germs are dead. Therefore prevention is better than cure. So keep it clean and healthy!