BS, Dietetics and Nutrition
In the past few years, food safety has become a vital aspect of the food production industry. While most food production firms may not introduce positive food safety practices into their operations, ensuring food safety may improve competitive advantage. Thus, it’s crucial to utilize the available tactics to deliver safe and quality products to consumers. It will help establish the reputation of your business resulting in higher revenue.
This article discusses what you need to know about food safety. You’ll learn what food safety is, ways to ensure you’re producing safe products, and much more. Read on.
What Is Food Safety?
Food safety refers to the proper handling, storing, and preparation of food to prevent contamination. It also ensures the food maintains its nutritional value for consumers to have a healthy consumption. Ensuring food safety will play a significant role in protecting consumers’ health from food-borne diseases and food poisoning.
While some cases of food poisoning can be treated at home, others may require serious medical attention. Therefore, knowing how to protect your consumers from food infections and food poisoning will be essential in improving the efficiency of your business operations.
Over the years, governments have regulated how food manufacturing firms handle their product to ensure food safety. As a business owner, ensure you’re up to date with ever-changing rules and regulations while conducting your food production processes. It will save you from legal repercussions that will negatively affect your reputation.
Ways To Ensure Food Safety
You can consider using the following ways to ensure you produce safe and quality products for your consumers:
1. Use Of Automation And Technology
With technological advancement, you can easily optimize your business operations to boost efficiency. Unlike humans, automation and integration will play a huge role in minimizing errors, thus producing a safe product for human consumption.
Installing TDI Packsys Inspection Systems and similar systems may help analyze the production line and identify any error or foreign objects that may compromise food safety. But it’s essential to conduct extensive research to ensure the system will be ideal in your business operations, giving the value of your hard-earned bucks.
Although automating your business operations may effectively ensure food safety, it’s crucial to understand the associated costs. Analyze the whole process of purchasing and integrating software in your business processes. If the cost is higher than its return on investment( RoI), it might not be a worthwhile investment.
2. Waste Management
It is another way you can utilize to ensure you produce safe and quality products for your clients. A food production line will generate lots of waste that must be disposed of properly. Failure to dispose of the generated rubbish and waste may compromise your food safety culture. It is because it’ll create an environment for disease-causing microorganisms.
There are many ways you can use to dispose of waste properly. They include:
- Use bins: the bins should be placed in convenient locations within your production line. Also, used ones should be easy to clean and move, improving the process of waste disposal. When using bins, make a habit of emptying them after every service to prevent waste build-up that may compromise the sanitation of your production area.
- Utilize recycling services: Several companies have specialized in recycling and reusing waste products over the years. You can visit and make a deal with them. Depending on your contract, the recycling company may take the trash out at a fee or free.
3. Safe Packaging, Storage, And Transportation
The way you handle the food products will affect their safety. There are several ways you can ensure the safety of food products when packaging, storing, or transporting. One of them is neutralizing the impact of bacteria on the food. You can utilize pasteurization methods to do this. For instance, you can use infrared heating to safeguard food products from bacteria and other harmful microorganisms. Also, depending on what you’re packaging, filling stand-up pouches instead ensures the seal is away from products that may be open, which leads to fewer chances of cross-contamination happening if a product is uncooked.
Also, ensure you follow the set rules and regulations when packaging or storing your products. It includes maintaining recommended temperature, wearing gloves, and much more; thus, you’ll produce an affordable and safe product making it easier for the consumer to choose the proper diet.
4. Personal Hygiene
This one is another way that will ensure food safety. Install the correct facilities within your production line to make it easier for your employees to maintain personal hygiene. Also, raise public awareness on the importance of promoting personal hygiene. It will contribute towards meeting food safety requirements.
Some of the ways your production team can maintain personal hygiene include:
- Hand washing – each employee should ensure they wash their hands properly before handling food. Throughout the day, their hands accumulate bacteria and other pathogens. Thus, if they won’t wash their hands, they may contaminate the food.
- Minimize hand contact with food – utilize the available tools such as disposable gloves through unigloves.co.uk to reduce hand contact with food. As mentioned above, the hands may be carrying a generous amount of bacteria, and it may end up contaminating the food, compromising food safety.
- Personal cleanliness – while working with food products, ensure each employee wears hairnets and has short nails. Other pathogen carriers may contaminate food products. Also, advise them to practice a sense of caution when handling food. It includes avoiding sneezing or coughing over food.
5. Pest Control
Pests may carry diseases and other infections from one place to another. If they gain access to your food production line, they may compromise your food safety measures. For this reason, ensure you utilize the available techniques to control pests.
Avoid the use of chemicals as this may contaminate the food products. Conduct extensive research to identify eco-friendly methods you can use to control pests within your production line.
6. Proper Machinery Maintenance
Machinery will play a vital role in ensuring you produce safe and quality products, in addition to extras you may have in place, such as strainers (which you can see this article to learn more about) to help filter out anything unwanted. For this reason, it’s crucial to conduct routine check-ups and maintenance. It will reduce the chances of errors that may affect the safety of your food products. Furthermore faulty equipment can produce toxic substances which would pose a serious hazard and you may find yourself needing to get hold of a cbrn gas mask for sale or two to have on your premises, should employees ever need them.
Apart from ensuring food safety, routine maintenance will help improve the shelf life of your machinery. Production machinery may be costly, and ensuring they function as long as possible will give you the value of your hard-earned bucks.
Bottom line
As discussed above, ensuring food safety will play a significant role in improving your company’s reputation. It’ll also ensure the consumer receives a quality and safe product. It will save them from incurring unnecessary medical costs due to food poisoning or food-borne diseases.
