HOW TO PREVENT CROSS CONTAMINATION

Cross contamination is one of the major areas considered in any food safety management system including, but not limited to ISO 22000, HACCP, GMP, BRC, Global Gap etc. when you consider ISO 22000 food safety management systems, it is one of the highly considered areas in risk assessment.

According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, approximately 10 million people suffer food-related illness each year. The majority of these illnesses last a short time and cause minor symptoms, such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Controlling food-related illness is difficult because bacteria may survive food processing and foods may become contaminated during preparation, cooking or storage. While there are many instances in which food contamination can occur during processing, 40 per cent of all food-borne illness outbreaks are a direct result of hand contamination which is the major cross contamination method in food industry. You would be surprised to learn 10 million bacteria can fit on an object as small as a pinhead. Given the right conditions, those 10 million bacteria can double every 20 minutes and spread rapidly with hands responsible for the dissemination of an estimated 80 per cent of common infectious disease.

Cross contamination is transferring bacteria or other harmful substances to food that has already been cooked or is ready to be served to the customer. i.e. Handling raw hamburger meat and then putting lettuce and tomatoes on the hamburger bun without washing your hands first. Any of the following things can transfer bacteria or other contaminates to ready-to-eat-food, such as your hands, utensils, knives, counters, cutting boards, cleaning cloths, raw food drippings etc.

How to Prevent Cross Contamination

Wash your hands between tasks, before touching ready-to-eat food, or before touching clean utensils.

Use a clean spoon each time you taste food.

Wash, rinse and sanitize utensils and all work surfaces after each task, especially after raw meat has touched the utensil or work surface.

Keep cutting boards and utensils in good repair for easier cleaning.

Store raw meat below ready-to-eat or cooked food

Store raw products separate from ready-to-eat products

It's very important to prepare food safely, to help stop harmful germs from spreading and growing.

Prevention of Commercial Cross Contamination

Don't let raw meat, poultry or unwashed raw vegetables touch other foods.

Never prepare ready-to-eat food using a chopping board, utensil or knife that you have used to prepare raw meat, poultry or unwashed raw vegetables unless they have been washed and disinfected thoroughly first.

Clean worktops and utensils with hot water and detergent and remember to disinfect those surfaces that have come in contact with raw meat, poultry and unwashed raw vegetables. You can disinfect equipment and utensils using boiling water, a chemical such as an antibacterial leaner or in a dishwasher which are in food grade.

Always use proper garments according to the work and use disposable gloves, masks and gum boots as required.

Always wash your hands thoroughly after touching raw meat, poultry and unwashed raw vegetables, and before you touch anything else.

Always cover raw meat and store it on the bottom shelf of the fridge where it can't touch or drip onto other foods.

Root vegetables such as potatoes, leeks and carrots often have traces of soil on them which can contain harmful bacteria, so wash them thoroughly before use. Don't forget to wash other fruit and vegetables too, especially if they are going to be eaten raw.

Keep dishcloths clean and change them regularly.

Prevention of House Hold Cross Contamination

When shopping

Separate raw meat, poultry, and seafood from other foods in your grocery-shopping cart.

Place these foods in plastic bags to prevent their juices from dripping onto other foods.

It is also best to separate these foods from other foods at check out and in your grocery bags.

When refrigerating food

Place raw meat, poultry, and seafood in containers or sealed plastic bags to prevent their juices from dripping onto other foods. Raw juices often contain harmful bacteria. Store eggs in their original carton and refrigerate as soon as possible.

When preparing food

Cleaning in Place – Wash hands and surfaces often. Harmful bacteria can spread throughout the kitchen and get onto cutting boards, utensils, and counter tops.

Hand Washing – Wash hands with soap and hot water before and after handling food, and after using the bathroom, changing diapers; or handling pets. Use hot, soapy water and paper towels or clean clothes to wipe up kitchen surfaces or spills. Wash cloths often in the hot cycle of your washing machine. Wash cutting boards, dishes, and counter tops with hot, soapy water after preparing each food item and before you go on to the next item.

Cutting Boards – Always use a clean cutting board. If possible, use one cutting board for fresh produce and a separate one for raw meat, poultry, and seafood. Once cutting boards become excessively worn or develop hard-to-clean grooves, you should replace them.

Marinating Food – Always marinate food in the refrigerator, not on the counter. Sauce that is used to marinate raw meat, poultry, or seafood should not be used on cooked foods, unless it is boiled just before using.

Fruits and Vegetables – Rinse fresh fruits and vegetables in running tap water to remove visible dirt and grime. Remove and discard the outermost leaves of a head of lettuce or cabbage. Because bacteria can grow well on the cut surface of fruit or vegetables, be careful not to contaminate these foods while slicing them up on the cutting board, and avoid leaving cut produce at room temperature for many hours.

Disease Control – Avoid preparing food for yourself or others if you are ill, especially with vomiting and/or diarrhoea.

  

When serving food

Always use a clean plate; never place cooked food back on the same plate or cutting board that previously held raw food.

ISO 22000: RISK ASSESSMENT - Introduction

Risk Assessment Cycle 

Risk assessment is the determination of quantitative or qualitative value of risk related to a concrete situation and a recognized threat (also called hazard) or dictionary definition for risk is  possibility of suffering harm or loss; danger. Scientists use the term risk when assessing potential human health threats from exposure to chemicals or pollutants in the environment. Risk is equal to a person's exposure multiplied by the toxicity of the chemical. Quantitative risk assessment requires calculations of two components of risk (R), the magnitude of the potential loss (L), and the probability (p) that the loss will occur. Acceptable risk is a risk that is understood and tolerated usually because the cost or difficulty of implementing an effective countermeasure for the associated vulnerability exceeds the expectation of loss.

Risk Assessment

Risk assessment consists of an objective evaluation of risk in which assumptions and uncertainties are clearly considered and presented. Part of the difficulty in risk management is that measurement of both of the quantities in which risk assessment is concerned - potential loss and probability of occurrence - can be very difficult to measure. The chance of error in measuring these two concepts is large. Risk with a large potential loss and a low probability of occurring is often treated differently from one with a low potential loss and a high likelihood of occurring. In theory, both are of nearly equal priority, but in practice it can be very difficult to manage when faced with the scarcity of resources, especially time, in which to conduct the risk management process. The nuclear, aerospace, oil, rail and military industries have a long history of dealing with risk assessment. Also, medical, hospital, social service and food industries control risks and perform risk assessments on a continual basis. Methods for assessment of risk may differ between industries and whether it pertains to general financial decisions or environmental, ecological, or public health risk assessment.

In food industry this methods are employed to calculate the risk in the identification of hazards and the critical control points for the system development in ISO 22000 or on the other words in HACCP system which is the food safety assurance system within the ISO 22000 structure. Thus here is a good reading to understand and how to carry out your Risk Assessment while you develop the food safety system.

Follow the link for the download of the document. 
BASIC IDEA ON RISK ASSESSMENT

If you need any help while conducting your risk assessments let me share your thoughts, then I may be able to help you by offering you the advice or suggestions according to the circumstances.

COOKING AS A CRITICAL CONTROL POINT - Part I

Heating Methods

Proper heating and cooling of precooked food products are critical to the prevention of food-borne illnesses. The objective is to provide you with knowledge about the types of pathogenic organisms which may be present on these foods, the proper interventions to control them as a public health hazard, and with procedures for assuring proper cooking and cooling of them where you will recognize inadequate processes associated with the cooking and cooling while discussing the hazards associated with foods and the cooking and cooling processes.

Cooking of the food products changes its color, texture, arrests enzymatic reactions and generally makes food more palatable while improving the taste and aroma. However, from a food safety point of view, it’s most important objective is to kill or inactivate spoilage of food and pathogenic organisms.

There are various types of cooking methods and controls available to assure the elimination of pathogens or sometimes heat degradable chemical compounds such as enzymes or hormones. But it is important to know how we transfer the heat to the products and its effectiveness in the cooking processes.

Conduction

The first method of heat transfer is conduction. Conduction (or heat conduction) is the transfer of heat energy by microscopic diffusion and collisions of particles or quasi-particles within a body due to a temperature gradient. The microscopically diffusing and colliding objects include molecules, electrons, atoms, and phonons. They transfer microscopically disorganized kinetic and potential energy, which are jointly known as internal energy. Conduction can only take place within an object or material, or between two objects that are in direct or indirect contact with each other. Conduction takes place in all forms of ponderable matter, such as solids, liquids, gases and plasmas. Whether by conduction or by thermal radiation, heat spontaneously flows from a body at a higher temperature to a body at a lower temperature. In the absence of external drivers, temperature differences decay over time, and the bodies approach thermal equilibrium.

Heating by conduction is a slow process in which heat is applied to the food container, and the heat is passed on to the food. In conduction heating, heat is transferred through the food being cooked one particle at a time (from one molecule to the next). This type of heating is typical for solid foods such as a turkey or a roast being cooked in an oven. To evaluate the adequacy of cooking, you must know where the coldest point is in the food. The coldest point in conduction heating is usually either the geometric center, or farthest point from the heat source.

Convection

A faster method of heating is convection where heat penetration is augmented by movement in the food. Convection is the concerted, collective movement of groups or aggregates of molecules within fluids (e.g., liquids, gases) and rheids, either through advection or through diffusion or as a combination of both of them. Convection of mass cannot take place in solids, since neither bulk current flows nor significant diffusion can take place in solids. Diffusion of heat can take place in solids, but that is called heat conduction. Convective heat transfer is one of the major modes of heat transfer, and convection is also a major mode of mass transferring fluids. Convective heat and mass transfer take place both by diffusion – the random Brownian motion of individual particles in the fluid – and by advection, in which matter or heat is transported by the larger-scale motion of currents in the fluid.

Convection heating can only occur in foods that can move within the cooking vessel. This movement is referred to as convection currents, and uneven heating within the food brings them about. For example, in a pot of stew heat moves through the food container walls and heats the material nearest to the wall of the pot. As this part of the food becomes warmer it tends to rise, and the cooler material at the center of the container sinks. These convection currents speed the heating process, and make it more uniform. The coldest spot in convection heating is no longer the geometric center but is nearer the bottom center of the container where the currents diverge.

Forced Convection

Forced convection is a mechanism, or type of transport in which fluid motion is generated by an external source (like a pump, fan, suction device, etc.). It should be considered as one of the main methods of useful heat transfer as significant amounts of heat energy can be transported very efficiently. For even faster heating and more uniformity, forced convection is used. This is convection heating that is facilitated by stirring or agitation. Stirring moves the food around in the heating container and by doing so speeds the heating process.

There are a variety of methods for stirring foods at the food processor level, but at the retail level the cook simply stirring the pot usually accomplishes it. The location of the cold spot in forced convection heating depends on the type of stirring involved, however if very active stirring is involved, cold spots are virtually eliminated. Forced convection can also be observed in forced air ovens where forced air circulation facilitates faster heat transfer on the surface of the product.

WHY FOOD SAFETY IS EXTREMELY CRITICAL?

Why Food Safety?

Consumer awareness on food safety issues and product safety requirements has probably never been as high as today in history. Significant food crises in Europe and US as well as the other part of the world during the past decade have raised doubts in the consumer’s mind while creating a lack of trust and confidence in manufacturers due to the corporate crimes and profit maximization malpractices in open market today around the world. 

These issues can be summarize as,

•  Growing consumer awareness,
• More foods prepared away from home,
• Globalization and less barriers to trade presents new food safety challenges, unfamiliar hazards or new hazards,
• International trade of food products are increasing,
• Increase in scientific knowledge about hazards associated with foods and consequent effects on health,
• Rising of incidence of food-borne illness in some countries (i.e., 70% of the approximate 1.5 billion case of diarrhoea that occur globally each year are directly caused by chemical or biological contamination of food.)

In past, product safety was supposed to be a voluntary responsibility of manufacturers but the publication of EU Directive 2001/95/EC on General Product Safety in December 2001, and EU Regulation 178/2002 on Food Safety in January 2002 brought about a significant change to the exports while restricting malpractices. Today, European legislation constitutes a set of requirements that each organization in food manufacturing, distributing, importing and/or exporting products to and from Europe must comply with. In addition, FDA regulations and various other export barriers (July 25, 1996, the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) published a final rule (PR/HACCP) on Pathogen Reduction; Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) Systems) as well as individual consumer food safety requirements (TESCO/GLOBAL GAP) are in force considering their consumers.  

Food-borne illness and food-borne injury are at best unpleasant; at worst, they can be fatal. But there are also other consequences. Outbreaks of food-borne illness can damage trade and tourism, and lead to loss of earnings, unemployment and litigation. Food spoilage is wasteful, costly and can adversely affect trade and consumer confidence. As to the definition, Food-borne illness is a preventable disease affecting all people, which has significant impact on public health and significant trade implications on economies.  To date, there are 250+ types of food borne illnesses have been identified with the effects ranging from acute to chronic illness such as mild symptoms to life threatening, i.e. Sequelae - septicemia, abortion, arthritis, hemolytic uremic syndrome, Guillain-Barre syndrome, and death.

Food-borne diseases are significantly under reported, due to the lack of awareness in community. Microbial pathogens in food cause an estimated 6.5 - 33 million cases of human illness and up to 9,000 deaths in the United States each year. Over 40 different food borne microbial pathogens including fungi, viruses, parasites, and bacteria, are believed to cause human illnesses. For six bacterial pathogens, the costs of human illness are estimated to be $9.3 - $12.9 billion annually, of these costs, $2.9 - $6.7 billion are attributed to food borne bacteria.

These estimates were basically developed to provide an analytical support for USDA’s Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) system which rule for meat and poultry at the beginning that overrule entire food industry today with amalgamating in to the core of the various global food standards.

“Beyond the legal aspect, consumer safety is primarily a question of business ethics and responsibility. Good product quality and product safety contribute to build up consumer confidence and consequently strengthen the image of a company or a brand in the consumer’s mind. Failure to respect consumers’ needs and expectations may be interpreted as betraying this confidence and consequently may lead, in the long term and the worst case, to damage for a company and its brand image and in some cases for the business partners and the whole industry. This is what is at stake when quality and safety are compromised.

Fortunately, most companies already take product quality and consumer safety very seriously. A lot of good practices have been developed and implemented on a voluntary basis. These practices ensure that product safety has never been as high as it is today. Companies continuously challenge their internal quality systems and work on continuous improvement thanks to new technologies and ways of working. 

However, despite all the efforts deployed to ensure optimum product quality and all the precautions taken every day, incidents do occur where inappropriate products reach consumers. Once identified, such products must be rapidly located and removed from the market. This principle is linked to the ability of a company to trace products along the supply chain, to withdraw them from distribution channels whenever necessary and recall them from consumers whenever required.”

(Courtesy: The Traceability Blue Book /ECR – Using Traceability in the Supply Chain to meet Consumer Safety Expectations, 2004)

ISO 22000: Start Your ISO 22000 Project with PDCA Cycle

It is very important to know where you are in any project, thus it is very critical to plan your work at the very beginning.  In this period, your 80% skills and working time has to be utilized for planning the work. Therefore it is very important to have a good plan and then you must eventually execute it. Before preparing a plan for the implementation of ISO 22000 FSMS, you can look at the presentation here and get some idea of the work that you are planning, but remember to read the ISO 22000 standard and its sister standards before you go ahead. You can use the given presentation even at the kick start of your project planning session, as a tool for focusing your team towards the goal.  

Don’t wait go get the stuff, download the presentation and send me some feedback, tell me what you want and your questions regarding any issue you face every day while you implementing or running your system.

Start with Plan-Do-Check-Act Guidelines - PDCA Cycle PPT

What is HACCP - Part II

The Codex General Principles of Food Hygiene 

Identify the essential principles of food hygiene applicable throughout the food chain (including primary production through to the final consumer), to achieve the goal of ensuring that food is safe and suitable for human consumption;

Recommend a HACCP-based approach as a means to enhance food safety;

Indicate how to implement those principles; and

Provide guidance for specific codes which may be needed for - sectors of the food chain; processes; or commodities; to amplify the hygiene requirements specific to those areas.

Principles of the HACCP System

The HACCP system consists of the following seven principles:

PRINCIPLE I

Conduct a Hazard Analysis

List the food safety hazards identified in accordance with production process which must be controlled for each process.

PRINCIPLE II

Determine the Critical Control Points (CCPs)

List the critical control points for each of the identified food safety hazards, including, as appropriate: (i) Critical control points designed to control food safety hazards that could be introduced in the establishment, and (ii) Critical control points designed to control food safety hazards introduced outside the establishment, including food safety hazards that occur before, during, and after entry into the establishment;

PRINCIPLE III

Establish Critical Limit(s)

List the critical limits that must be met at each of the critical control points. Critical limits shall, at a minimum, be designed to ensure that applicable targets or performance standards established by standard procedures, and any other requirement set forth in pertaining to the specific process or product, are met;

PRINCIPLE IV

Establish  monitoring procedures

Prepare the procedures, and the frequency with which those procedures will be performed, that will be used to monitor each of the critical control points to ensure compliance with the critical limits;

PRINCIPLE V

Establish Corrective Actions

Include all corrective actions that have been developed in accordance with process requirements of the product manufactured, to be followed in response to any deviation from a critical limit at a critical control point which shows that a particular CCP is not under control.

PRINCIPLE VI

Establish Verification Procedures 

Provide  a record keeping system that documents the monitoring of the critical control points. The records shall contain the actual values and observations obtained during monitoring to confirm that the HACCP system is working effectively.

PRINCIPLE VII

Establish Record Keeping and Documentation Procedures 

Prepare  the verification procedures appropriate to HACCP principles while concerning documentation requirements and the frequency with which those procedures will be performed, that the establishment will use in accordance with process requirements of the product manufactured.

Guidelines for the Implementation of HACCP Systems

Once you decided to establish a HACCP system to any sector of the food chain, that sector should be operating according to the Codex General Principles of Food Hygiene, while applying the appropriate Codex Codes of Practice, and appropriate food safety legislations according to country of origin or end product destination. Accordingly, Management commitment is the first mandatory requirement for implementation of an effective HACCP system. During hazard identification, evaluation, and subsequent operations in designing and applying HACCP systems, you must consider the impact of raw materials, ingredients, food manufacturing practices, role of manufacturing processes to control hazards, likely end-use of the product, categories of consumers of concern, and epidemiological evidence relative to food safety.

The intent of the HACCP system is to focus control at CCPs. According to the hazard analysis, redesign of the operation shall be considered if a hazard which must be controlled is identified but no CCPs are found. HACCP should be applied to each specific operation separately. CCPs identified in any given example in any Codex Code of Hygienic Practice might not be the only one legislation identified for a specific application or might be of a different nature. The HACCP application should be reviewed and necessary changes made when any modification is made in the product, process, or any other step of manufacturing process. When applying HACCP to a product manufacturing process, it is to be flexible and customizable, where appropriate. It is also important to consider the given context of the application taking into account of the nature and the size of the operation.

(Courtesy: http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/y1579e/y1579e03.htm) 

What is HACCP ?

HACCP - The hazard analysis critical control point system (HACCP) is a scientific and systematic way of enhancing the safety of foods from primary production to final consumption through the identification and evaluation of specific hazards and measures for their control to ensure the safety of food. HACCP is a tool to assess hazards and establish control systems that focus on prevention rather than relying mainly on end-product testing.

The HACCP system was a result of another NASA requirement outsourced to Pillsbury Corporation in 1960s which collaboratively works with the U.S. Army labs to provide safe food for astronauts on space expeditions. In this contest they use NASA's own requirements for Critical Control Points (CCP) in engineering management which was the basis for the start for food safety control. Existing control methods such as end product testing was outdated when compared to the greater risks NASA has to undertake considering the project costs as well as the human resources involved in those projects, thus they required a failsafe mechanism to manufacture foods.

Thus project team realized that they needed a brand new approach to food safety, where they adapt CCP derived from Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) which was developed by NASA for the munitions industry to test weapon and engineering system reliability. This testing method is date backs to the World War II where traditional end product testing for ammunition and artillery shell's firing mechanisms could not be performed, and a large percentage of the artillery shells made at the time were either duds or misfiring was observed which lead to develop FMEA. With this leap forward step, NASA and Pillsbury work on critical failure areas and develop mechanisms to eliminate them from the system, these criterion include physical, chemical and biological controls while production in progress rather than waiting to see end product sampling results. Initially the system was used by Pillsbury Corporation in own manufacturing plants. This was then adapted by FDA as a guide to produce meat and poultry products especially in the canned format. In 1971, it became public and Canadian Food Regulation Authority was first to adapt HACCP as Official food safety control system which followed by United Kingdom and then by the US. Today it is followed almost everywhere in the world and accepted as the major food safety control criteria within various commercial food safety systems introduced to the world.

     

HACCP was initially begun with three principles which are conduct a hazard analysis (1), identify critical control points (2), establish CCP monitoring requirements (4). Then it was further developed by Pillsbury and added two more principles shortly (1975) which were establish critical limits for each CCP (3) and establish corrective actions (5) and then it was undertaken by Codex Alimentarius where it became seven principles (1997) while amalgamating with Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) as the foundation for physical control of food hygiene in food manufacturing environments.