Food Hygiene

Our patients and visitors often have reduced immune systems and are susceptible to infection.

This information has been specially developed for volunteers, not because we think that you don’t know about good hygiene, but to raise awareness of the specific needs of our patients, and to fulfil our statutory requirements.

Introduction

Good food hygiene is essential to ensure that any food provided is safe to eat. It also ensures compliance with the law, and reduces the risk of food borne illness, which can result in serious health consequences.

Good food hygiene is also essential in order to prevent legal action being taken as a result of inadequate food hygiene measures. Poor practice can ultimately result in the overall reputation of the hospice being affected, especially following a food poisoning outbreak. We therefore take food hygiene seriously.

Good food hygiene is all about being able to control the exposure and risk of harmful bacteria to our patients and visitors as this can cause serious illness, particularly to those people whose immune system may be less resilient than others.

Some facts

Food poisoning is a huge problem in this country with over 4 million people being affected annually because of poor hygiene in take-aways and restaurants. A further 1.3 million are affected after eating food prepared in the home.

The biggest cause of food poisoning is bacteria and ‘food hygiene’ concerns the practical measures involved in keeping food safe to eat and wholesome throughout all stages of handling.

This includes:

• Protecting it from contamination by bacteria
• Preventing multiplication of bacteria
• Destroying bacteria by thorough cooking

Preventative and protective measures

There are a number of food hygiene measures used to reduce the risk of bacteria responsible for food borne illness occurring, which can result in serious health consequences.

The 4 important things to remember for good food hygiene practices are:

• Cross- contamination
• Cleaning
• Chilling
• Cooking

These are more commonly referred to as the 4 c’s.

Food dates

There are currently two categories of food dates, these are ‘best before’ and ‘use by’. There is some confusion about the two dates.

USE BY DATE

Foods must be disposed of after the ‘use by date’. High risk foods such as meat, fish and dairy as well as some ready to eat products, can make you ill if eaten after the ‘use by date.’

BEST BEFORE

Foods marked with a ‘best before’ date are still OK to consume after the date as it is not the safety of these foods which is compromised, but the quality which may be affected. Therefore always ensure that the product, is not likely to compromise the well being of another person, e.g. biscuits and fruit juice. These usually carry a lengthy date due to the manufacturing processes used to produce the food.

It is essential that when opening all fruit juice that they are labelled immediately with the day and the date of opening. Without a date we have no option but to dispose of the item. This wastes valuable hospice funds.

Our role as food handlers

• Making sure that regular and adequate hand washing procedures are carried out when necessary
• Maintaining a high level of personal hygiene to protect ourselves and others
• Making sure that food is correctly stored, in date and date labelled to prevent the risk of infection
• Wearing correct disposable gloves when delivering food and ensuring that gloves are removed and disposed of if there is a gap between serving food, and a fresh pair of gloves put on when starting again
• To refrain from work if displaying symptoms of diarrhoea and sickness to protect patients, carers, visitors and each other from the spread of infection

All volunteers should not return to work until they have been free from symptoms for 48 hrs.