Seeing is Believing: Using Food Safety Tools

By: Josh Michael Katz, PhD, Director of Food Safety Programs, Food Marketing Institute

Store managers have many tools to ensure food-handling best practices are taking place in their establishments.  Having the right tools, such as sanitized and calibrated thermometers to check cooking and holding temperatures and sanitizer test kits to check sanitizer concentrations, are extremely important.  However, a manager’s eyes are perhaps even more important.  Visual observation of employee food-handling practices, such as proper thermometer use, handwashing, and equipment cleaning must occur each day, along with corrective action and training. 

Here are some examples, along with the immediate proper corrective action, of what the store manager should keep a lookout for:

• Employee sneezing/coughing (discard food if exposed, check for ill employee, re-train if necessary)
• Employee touching ready-to-eat food with bare hands (discard food and re-train)
• Employee rinsing hands only (re-train employee on proper handwashing procedure)
• Employee using infrared temperature gun only to check cooking/holding food temperatures (re-train employee to use stem thermometer to back up infrared thermometer)
• Employee placing recently cut melon into display cooler (re-train employee to check melon temperature and pre-chill before storing in display cooler)
• Employee storing wrench on knife rack (safely clean, sanitize knives and rack, and re-train employee to segregate tools from food-contact surfaces to deter cross-contamination)
• Employee receiving food from suspect vendor (retrain employee to ensure product is from an approved vendor and that product is in sound condition)

FMI and Alchemy Systems have developed online training courses that will train store managers to ensure that proper supervision of employee practices are part of their daily routine.  Learn more about food safety at www.FMI.org/Food-Safety/SafeMark.