Food Safety for : Chefs and Food Handlers

Food handlers in food businesses carry responsibility to prevent contamination and keep food safe. They perform tasks from cooking and serving to storing and transporting while upholding health and hygiene.

Learn steps to stay hygienic in the food industry by washing hands before and during work, using hand sanitizer, avoiding touching your face, and avoiding close contact with ill people.

Learn reporting procedures for food safety illnesses that must be reported, such as diarrhea, vomiting, food poisoning, suspected food, and discharges from eyes, nose, or ears.

Define viruses and their role in infections and diseases, including coronaviruses and COVID-19, and describe transmission, pandemic spread, and prevention measures guided by the World Health Organization and United Nations.

Learn how government requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic mandate workplace protocols in food production, including temperature checks, hand sanitization, masks, gloves, aprons, and face shields, with up to date guidelines.

Discover how the World Health Organization, the United Nations’ specialized agency for international public health, operates to achieve the highest possible level of health for all.

Recognize that bacteria are invisible to the naked eye and require food, moisture, time, and warmth to grow; pathogens cause illness and bacteria affect food appearance, smell, and texture.

Learn to assess food risk by identifying high-risk, ready-to-eat foods needing refrigeration, freezing, or hot storage at about 63 degrees Celsius, and low-risk foods that store at ambient temperatures.

Identify physical, microbiological, chemical, and allergen contamination types, including foreign bodies and allergen sources from nuts and poultry, plus bacteria, viruses, molds, yeast, parasites, and greases.

Explore the vehicles and routes of contamination that move bacteria from surfaces and sauces to ready-to-eat foods, highlighting how hand contact surfaces transfer pathogens.

Explore allergenic hazards in food safety, why they are increasing, and the rapid immune responses and symptoms like rash, swelling, breathing difficulty, and collapse.

Identify allergenic hazards and how the immune system reacts within minutes, causing rash, swelling, difficulty breathing, and possible collapse.

Control energetic hazards with approved suppliers, suitable packaging and labeling, and allergen segregation from delivery to service; maintain color-coded equipment, cleaning, spill management, and menu descriptions with clear ingredient information.

Identify risk groups at a high level of infection, including very young children and babies, pregnant women and unborn babies, ill people with allergic reaction to ingredients, and the elderly.

Explore how workspaces and external factors influence critical control points. Examine waste management, storage and warehousing, and finish with additional information.

Identify critical control points, or CCPs, as points in a food process where control prevents, eliminates, or reduces a food safety hazard during the SEP level.

Manage waste risk by keeping risk areas clean and tidy, and disposing waste into plausible containers. Clean areas after use and report waste problems to your superior.

Ensure production areas comply with laws by maintaining cleanliness, installing necessary equipment, and designing spaces to enable easy cleaning and disinfection in surrounding areas to minimize contamination risk.

Explore cleaning standards for food safety, including definitions, personal protective equipment, legal requirements, hazards of poor cleaning, chemical handling, the stages of cleaning and disinfection, and sanitizing of work areas.

Wear and maintain personal protective equipment to ensure safety in food processing. Adhere to equipment standards, wear masks, gloves, safety glasses, and safety shoes, and keep uniforms clean and intact.

Identify cleaning requirements including hot and cold water, suitable chemicals, cleaning tools like buckets, brushes, and brooms, electricity for high-pressure cleaners, and the physical energy and time needed.

Clean and sanitize work areas, then air-dry surfaces; use cleaned and sanitized surfaces for both raw and ready-to-eat foods, because sanitizing alone cannot remove all bacteria.