Your Role As a Food Safety Supervisor

In your job as a food safety supervisor, you must always take precautions to make sure the food you are preparing, serving, or eating is safe for consumption. You must be proactive and remain two steps ahead of any potential disaster, or the results can be dire. You cannot always tell from looking at food that is not safe to eat. So once cooked it's much too late. Instead you must follow proper health and safety standards to ensure that food is used up or disposed of before it has a chance of going bad. Remember the 2hr/4hr rule! Taking precautions in purchasing preparation, and storage is much easier than having to deal with illness or other concerns later. So what does it mean to be a proactive food safety supervisor? What precautions need to be taken in order to be confident that your team is serving only safe, clean, quality food? Well, it means that you must have an awareness of where your food products are sourced from and how they're being handled, right from the time they are delivered by your supplier. Take a look at the food items before you bring them into your restaurant. Check the temperature and for foul odors, discoloration, mold, softness, or any other abnormalities in appearance or texture. Don't accept food that seems old, rotten, or compromised in any way. This is particularly important with meat products, as rotten meat can cause sever illness, and, in some extreme cases, death.

Once you have selected fresh, acceptable food items from your suppliers, you still have some work to do ensure it stays safe for consumption. Proper storage is key to preserving the quality and safety of many food items. Meat and dairy products must be refrigerated or frozen (but never refrozen once thawed!), and breads and grains but be stored somewhere cool and dry. Even fruits and vegetables should really be put in the fridge to delay any potential mold growth. Mold and bacteria spread at much faster rates in warm and damp conditions, so that's why you must be conscientious about storage in order to maintain food safety. As a food safety supervisor, you set the example for your team, and that starts with how it's stored.

Food preparation is another area where you can take precautions as a food safety supervisor, so you can be confident you won't be putting the health of your customers at risk. In order to keep food clean and safe during preparation, you must avoid cross contamination. You can do this by using separate cutting surfaces, knives, and other utensils for cutting different items. Remember to wash your hands after touching raw meat so that you don't spread any bacteria to foods that will not be cooked.

If you are questioning the quality of the food you are cooking or serving, it's already too late. If you want to be a responsible, respectable food safety supervisor, you must engage in safe food practices during purchase, storage, and preparation. Taking a few precautions can save you many problems in the long run!

There are many professional Food safety Consulting and SQF Consultants who will help you to get the HACCP Certification. BDFoodsafety.com is the leading SQF consultants recognized by the International HACCP Alliance. Our passion is to help others to produce quality and wholesome food.

Source: Ezine Articles