Legal action underway Last summer’s Salmonella outbreak at Brent’s Deli in Westlake Village, California, sent 8 people to the hospital. The Ventura County Environmental Health Division conducted inspections at the restaurant, finding inadequate employee hand-washing along with other violations. Poor hand hygiene, poor handwashing, remains the #1 contributing factor cited in outbreak investigations. The risk […]
Don’t Let Perfection Be The Enemy Of Good: The Case for Frequency Over Thoroughness
The risk of a looming foodborne outbreak due to a missed hand wash or the cleaning of a high-touch surface will never be zero. That reality compromises many a food safety program as operators specify thorough cleaning with lofty label-claim products over frequent lighter duty cleaning of both hands and high-touch surfaces. For hand cleanliness, […]
Quality Assurance, Food Safety & Operations: Handwashing for Today and for 2020
An operator’s food safety risk is managed by a focused team of professionals with specific skills, objectives and measurements for success. Each works within a different time frame. The prep-line and wait staff are closest to the food and those served. Their skills and languages may differ but they share a primary objective – service. […]
A Perfect Stormy Virus Season
Norovirus, H3N2 Flu, Colds, Enterovirus 68 and Ebola … Norovirus rates are picking up in a variety of environments as the winter deepens, but this year, it shares the stage with H3N2 flu, Ebola and Enterovirus 68. These four, along with the common cold, are spread everywhere folks gather, calling for added away-from-home hand and […]
Handwash Methodology
Situations drive operator choices “Over here, Ray debones raw chicken. Later in the shift, he works at the counter.” Handwash protocols in foodservice are dictated by the situation. Situations are defined and grouped by the operator and training begins. This sequence hardly ever happens. Why? It credits the operator with caring, knowing the risks of […]
Boil-Water Advisory
Should it close restaurants and all foodservice? Mercer Island Washington announced a boil-water advisory and closed foodservice establishments. How do you close a nursing home? Are you going to close schools and hospitals? Why close restaurants and then advise households that: Dishwashers can be used if run with the sanitizing/heat cycle and commercial dishwashing detergent. […]
Outbreaks are Paved With Good Intentions
Our current work on electronic handwashing compliance in restaurants clearly documents the industry’s poor hand hygiene reality. It is encouraging to watch how monitoring and keeping score changes the game. It is the foundation for motivating behavior change and raising the bar for handwash frequency and food safety. New behaviors are formed but it takes […]
Handwashing: Let’s Start Talking Risk
Monitoring for the near misses Restaurants, particularly multi-unit operators, could reduce their corporate risk of an outbreak by increasing their ability to simply talk more about the #1 risk, poor handwashing. This Circles of Success assessment is an instrument to make that happen, to merge the science of Quality Assurance with the priorities of Operations […]
Handshake vs. Fist Bump Greeting vs. Elbow Tap
Study Suggests a Change of Greetings in Professional Kitchens A handshake is many things, mostly positive. It conveys feelings of friendship and common ground. The handshake builds customer confidence when greeted by their chef, server or bartender. A university study in the United Kingdom provides some added information to help assess the risk at your […]
Operator Focused Inspections
Scheduling expands the range of risks addressed Introduction: Scheduled inspections are a reward for consistently following food safety processes with regulatory clearance. A scheduled inspection system as in Olmsted County Minnesota, “PTV”, converts the common “raid” atmosphere into teachable moments. Let’s encourage this improvement and free our 30,000+ inspectors to first instruct. This provides a […]
