Biological contaminants & 4 sources of biological contamination
When microorganisms are unintentionally present in food, they are considered biological contamination. Learn how to detect and avoid it.
Foodborne illness is the result of consuming hazardous foods and beverages. You can best prevent foodborne illness by ...
No customer would ever dream of spending the night in the hospital because of a foodborne illness. At the very least, any customer who contracts a foodborne illness to hear about food recalls from your services or products would never come back to your restaurant.
Foodborne illnesses are a product of poor food safety practices in an establishment. In addition to serving quality foods, learning how to prevent foodborne illnesses from occurring is part of the responsibility of food handlers to consumers.
Preventing the occurrence of foodborne illnesses is a year-round task. It is an important part of a food handler's food safety training. Every day, food safety and hygiene practices must be religiously applied to minimize the risk of illness. In doing so, food businesses also help minimize economic loss and help promote sustainability. With fewer cases of foodborne illnesses every year, the workforce and food supply can normally function.
Find out the most basic ways of how can you prevent foodborne illness from occurring as a result of the food item you produce and serve in this article.
Any foodborne illness results from the consumption of contaminated foods with biological, chemical, or physical hazards. To date, more than 250 different foodborne illnesses have been identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The majority of these illnesses are caused by biological contaminants such as bacteria, viruses, and parasites. Other cases of foodborne illnesses have also been reported to be caused by toxins and chemical contamination of clean food.
As previously mentioned, foodborne illnesses result from poor food safety practices and careless food processing. The tasks under a food safety plan encourage having a clean and safe environment to minimize the occurrence of pathogens and other hazards.
Foodborne illnesses may be caused by the following factors:
These mentioned factors can promote the growth of bacteria and other pathogens and creat hazardous foods. Improper food handling has resulted in many issues such as foodborne illness outbreaks in the past. Undercooked meat has been linked to cases that have resulted in severe gastrointestinal symptoms, hospitalizations, and even death in some cases.
All consumers exposed to a food safety hazard are similarly exposed to the risk of having a foodborne illness. Although, some high-risk groups are more likely to get a foodborne illness even with minimal exposure to a food hazard.
This group consists of the following:
These individuals have a weakened immune system when compared to a healthy person. Therefore, they are more likely to get affected by a foodborne illness. Chances are, the effects of a common foodborne illness can inflict severe symptoms in their case.
Depending on the degree of food contamination, even a perfectly healthy person can get sick. They can also experience common symptoms such as abdominal cramps or stomach flu. This is why attention to food safety is important.
In a restaurant or any food establishment, your team must be well-prepared to address and control any potential hazards that may be present. Your team is required to implement a food safety management system (FSMS) with the objective of monitoring and ensuring that all food safety practices are performed correctly and on time. In addition, this system will include a list of food safety practices to help keep your food establishment free of hazards and your consumers safe from foodborne illnesses.
To help you answer the question "What is the most important way to prevent a foodborne illness from bacteria?" and come up with the most important food safety practices for your food establishment, we've listed 10 basic yet effective ways to do this.
In addition to implementing these food safety practices, constant monitoring is a must. A working food safety management system includes a monitoring system for every food safety task. At FoodDocs, we offer a smart solution to monitoring your operations. We've taken the traditional FSMS to a whole new level and created a digital platform for food businesses.
Our digital FSMS features digital monitoring forms that can save your employees' time through its auto-fill feature. All that is left to do for your employees is to verify the logged information. In addition, no food safety task will get left behind as our digital FSMS features a smart notification system that alerts food handlers of any food safety task to be done. Switching to our digital solution would only require you to answer some basic questions and you will get a complete digital FSMS in an average of 15 minutes.
Seafood and other seafood products have been linked to several different foodborne illnesses such as cholera and typhoid fever. The pathogens that made people sick in these food poisoning cases are known to be also found in contaminated water sources. Similar to any other raw materials, seafood and seafood products can either have naturally occurring pathogens or have these pathogens that cause bacterial infection introduced during preparation.
In a food establishment, you can best prevent foodborne illness by implementing the following food handling practices:
Under the ruling of the Food and Drug Administration of the US, seafood manufacturers are required to implement food safety plans that contain ways to prevent any foodborne infection specific to seafood products. Learn more about seafood HACCP here.
Simply knowing how can you prevent foodborne illnesses and the basics of food safety may not be enough to control them from occurring. Proper and regular implementation is required to ensure their effectiveness. Using a traditional FSMS, you can do this but by the end of the month, your file cabinets will already be filled with monitoring forms.
In addition, a traditional FSMS does not ensure that your food employees will not forget some of the most important food safety tasks. What you need is an FSMS that will help you efficiently get the job done fast, while giving you detailed progress reports and enough time to manage your business.
At FoodDocs, we offer our digital Food Safety Management System. Built by our team of food safety experts, this digital solution promises to significantly increase the efficiency of your food safety system and ensure that every task gets done on time and correctly. The process of switching to our digital solution is not that complicated. In fact, all it takes is for you to answer a few basic questions about your operations, and our system will automatically generate a comprehensive digital FSMS for you!
What's even greater is that the whole process will only take an average of 15 minutes! In that amount of time, our system can automatically tailor the digital FSMS to your daily operations. What is exactly in a digital FSMS, you ask? Here is a list of what you will get:
You do not need to be tech-savvy to use our system. At FoodDocs, we want to make food safety compliance attainable for everyone - even those that hate digital platforms. With our system, you do not have to face any hassle as the switch itself will only take 15 minutes. Additionally, our team of expert customer support can help you set up and improve your digital FSMS.
Start your food safety journey with us by availing of our free, 14-day trial. Use this free trial to work your way around and experience our digital FSMS.
When microorganisms are unintentionally present in food, they are considered biological contamination. Learn how to detect and avoid it.
Foodborne illness is a disease that is transmitted to people by food. The food itself can be contaminated at any stage.
To prevent poor food safety from disrupting the efficiency of your daily operations, constant and proper monitoring must be applied.