What’s HACCP All About, Anyway?
HACCP stands for Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points. Essentially, it’s the ruler for health code standards. While it may all seem obvious (put a band-aid on when you cut your finger, don’t serve rotting fish, wash your hands after using the bathroom), there are a couple crucial concepts to remember and apply to your shift management and paperwork.
As food managers, we control 3 things (hence, Critical Control Points): Hygiene, Time, and Temperature.
1) Hygiene: You can never wash your hands too much.
· Bad hygiene is the main reason people get sick from food. Make sure your volunteers don’t do a thing in the kitchen until they wash their hands
· Keep the scene clean and scrub your paws after each task.
· Wear gloves when working with ready-to-eat foods.
· We have aprons, hairnets, and gloves for a reason – use them.
2) Time: Common sense trumps all.
· Don’t leave food out of the coolers or ovens too long. Immediately take temperatures and record them and then move the food to where it needs to go. Bacteria love nothing more than to bask on a table at room temperature.
· For the most part, if food is dated more than 4 days old, if it smells bad, or if it just looks gross, toss it and don’t think twice about it.
· ALL food must be labeled with contents and date, so we know we’re not holding on to it past its prime.
· Ask yourself, “Would I eat this?” If you wouldn’t eat it and offer a bite to your favorite grandmother, then don’t even think about serving it in a Campus Kitchen meal.
· Remember, young kids and senior citizens are the most vulnerable to food disease, so it’s better to be on the safe side.
· Oh, by the way, if food falls on the ground, it doesn’t matter how much time it’s been there (NO 5 Seconds Rule). Call it dead and throw it away. Always store food at least 6 inches off the ground.
3) Temperatures: What’s the magic number?
Okay, there are three critical control points when you must remember temperatures (in Fahrenheit):
· Cooking Food: When cooking, check the C-3 HACCP form. It will tell you the temperature to cook the food to. If you’re reheating anything, it always must get to 165 degrees.
· Cooling Food: All hot donated food needs to be cooled down to 70 degrees as quickly as possible. Cooling methods and documentation points are listed on the C-3 form and the F-2 hot donation form. Your failsafe method? Spread the food out as much as possible on a baking sheet, put it in the freezer and stir it regularly. Once the food is down to 70 degrees, wrap it and put it in the cooler, but please tear a hole in the saran wrap first, to allow the food to cool down to 41 degrees.
· Pulling food from the cooler: This is the biggie. Any food that is taken out of one of the refrigerators has to be temped immediately and recorded.
· If the temperature is 41 degrees or below, rock on.
· If it’s above 41 degrees (and it’s not because the thermometer is broken or because the food is fragmented – i.e. sandwiches or peas will often be temped at higher temperature than they really are), then the food needs to be thrown away. Again, better to err on the safe side.
The Campus Kitchens Project, Inc. © October 10
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