Food safety
You can't be too careful or spotless with your menu offer to customers
It's Food Safety Week from Monday 9 June to Friday 13 June. Stuart Knill, food safety manager at stocktaking and auditing company Venners, offers tips on how licensees can improve food safety in kitchens.
"At some stage in the not-too-distant past, chances are that you or someone close to you has had food poisoning. As many as 5.5 million people in the UK are estimated to suffer from food-borne illnesses each year - that's one in 10. The cost of food poisoning to the hospitality industry is estimated at £1.5bn.
"With pub operators becoming increasingly reliant on food sales, as wet-led sales decline, getting the food-safety message across to the industry has taken on a greater degree of importance.
"Initiatives such as Food Safety Week can help get the importance of food safety across to the hospitality sector, and should be supported by our industry.
"The aim of the UK campaign is to raise the awareness of good food safety, the basic principles of food hygiene and the best ways to avoid food poisoning. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is the lead sponsor of this year's event.
"Cleaning, cooking, chilling and avoiding cross-contamination will remain a focus of this year's Food Safety Week and critical messages will focus on issues such as always washing your hands before preparing food; cooking your burgers and sausages until there is no pink meat and they are piping hot throughout; keeping raw meat and poultry in covered containers at the bottom of your fridge, and never using the same chopping board for raw and ready-to-eat foods.
"Many people might assume these messages are common sense, but would be surprised to see what happens in practice. In my experience, businesses that get to grips with good food safety by putting the correct procedures and policies in place and successfully managing them, do very well, while those that take food safety for granted and simply assume it's happening, set themselves up for problems and risk losing their hard-earned reputation, their customers — or even their business.
"It is a commonly-accepted that if someone has a good experience while dining out, they might tell one person, but if they have a bad experience, such as getting food poisoning as a result of dining out, they will tell at least 10 people.
"I suggest that Food Safety Week be used as a timely reminder by all involved in the business of serving food, to review their systems, procedures, policies and management of food safety, in order to protect their customers, their reputation and their business."
