The onus is on the individual as much as the firm to make the probability of food poisoning diminish in a food related establishment.
It is common sense that a casual attitude towards hygiene within a food environment could result in contamination which might easily be followed by food poisoning and if the business is unlucky, costly legal action.
Food poisoning is frequently caused by:
- An infected or unwell employee touching food and transferring germs.
- Not washing hands properly.
- Not cooking food correctly, meat in particular.
- Not reheating foods adequately.
- Leaving food for long periods at warm temperatures.
- Incorrect storage of food e.g. refrigeration temperatures.
- Cross contamination.
- Ignoring the use by dates on stock.
How well you know different forms of food poisoning? If the answer is “not at all” then we recommend that you enrol on a food safety course and increase your knowledge, if you know what to do then you have the advantage.
Training companies like Food Alert in London offer convenient and accessible online and in classroom based food safety courses which could save your business from a most undesirable health crisis event.
Here are three common examples:
E-coli
Escherichia Coli is a well-publicised form of food poisoning. Interestingly, the symptoms can appear within hours or sometimes it takes a few days but when it arrives it’s unpleasant.
Major symptoms include:
Sickness.
Diarrhoea.
Abdominal pain.
A temperature.
Lack of appetite.
Norovirus
This is the “winter vomiting bug” which no one would wish to fall prey to, unfortunately if food isn’t handled correctly or cooked adequately then a customer wanting a nutritious meal could find themselves becoming very unwell.
Norovirus germs can live for days so if people touch or if an infected person handles food this could deliver misery.
Major symptoms include:
Projectile vomiting
Diarrhoea
Fever
Headache
Salmonella
This is another nasty ramification of a lack of food safety training.
Salmonella lives in the gut of many farm animals and so meat, poultry, eggs and even fish are the high risk foods for this illness. Fruit and vegetables treated with manure can also be susceptible.
It has no odour or visible sign so the maximum levels of hygiene and cooking foods thoroughly are the primary ways to halt its progress to humans. The very young, the elderly and people with deficient immune systems are particularly vulnerable.
If salmonella is ingested it takes between twelve and seventy-two hours for symptoms to present themselves.
Major symptoms include:
Vomiting.The sufferer is infectious. Fever.