Legal Requirements for Food Safety

Legislation sets out the basic hygiene requirements for all aspects of your business, including structure of the premises, the facilities within and the practices implemented by your staff. The main topic areas required under the regulations are:

Hazard analysis and identification of steps critical to food safety.

It is a legal requirement for the proprietor of the food business to carry out hazard analysis. The hazard analysis approach means the planning of food safety in easy logical steps. It should give a clearer focus on the controls that are important to an individual business to ensure safe food is provided. This approach is based on five principles.

1. The identification of food hazards, e.g.

• Bacteria, or other micro-organisms that cause food poisoning
• Chemicals
• Or physical contamination, including glass metal and plastic

2. Identify the points in the process where food hazards may arise

Through examining the process from the point of delivery right through to service you need to identify where food can become contaminated, where bacteria can grow, where micro-organisms can survive.

3. Decide which of the points identified are critical to food safety.

Critical control points are stages in the process whereby if contamination is not controlled there is a risk to the consumer. For example if food is not cooked effectively, survival of bacteria would potentially cause ill health.

4. Identify and implement effective control and monitoring procedures at the critical points.

If for example, you identify cooking as a critical control, the most effective way to ensure suitable cooking temperatures are achieved would be, to use a digital probe thermometer. You should make sure that the centre of the food reaches a temperature of 75°C for 30 seconds, or an equivalent time/ temperature combination.

Temperature / °C	Time
60	45 mins
65	10 mins
70	2 mins
75	30 secs
80	6 secs

Review of the analysis.

It may be necessary to review your controls in light of changes in menu, your equipment, or changes in the method of preparing food

For further information guidance can be sought from the Food Standards Agency website

Training

You must ensure food handlers are trained in food hygiene matters to a level appropriate to their work activities. The extent of training, instruction and or supervision should be determined by the proprietor. For example, a member of staff working at the delicatessen counter handling high risk ready-to-eat food will need a more in depth training than a check out operative.

Cleaning

Food premises must be kept clean and maintained in good repair and condition. This includes walls, floors, ceilings, and equipment throughout the premises.

Personal hygiene

Every person in a food handling area must maintain a high degree of personal hygiene and wear appropriate clean over-clothing. No person known or suspected of carrying a disease that can be passed on through food, eg infected wounds, vomiting or diarrhoea may work in a food handling area. For food handlers that have suffered from vomiting or diarrhoea it is recommended that they do not return to work until 48 hours after the last bout.

Food Safety Temperature Control

Good temperature control goes along way in preventing food poisoning. The regulations specify that food must be kept out of danger zone temperatures where bacteria will grow.

The danger zone, where bacteria will grow rapidly is between 8°C and 63°C

Chill Holding Requirements

You must ensure that high risk foods which are likely to support the growth of pathogenic micro-organisms, or the formation of toxins are kept at a temperature of 8°C or below, during cold storage.

However to accommodate the practicalities of service and display such foods are permitted to be stored out of temperature control for one period of up to four hours. If the food is not consumed at the end of this period it must be restored to the correct temperature until consumed or discarded.

Hot Holding Requirements

You must ensure that high risk foods which are intended to be sold hot are kept at or above 63°C. The exemption to this requirement states that hot food may be held for one period of up to 2 hours at a temperature cooler that 63°C. After the two hour period the food must be stored at a suitable temperature either below 8°C or above 63°C and then kept at that temperature until it is used.

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