Essentials Of Food Hygiene

In the UK, the government has established a set of food hygiene principles that must always be adhered to. These guidelines make up the Food Standards Act of 1990. The legislation applies to anyone preparing, cooking, or serving food to members of the public.

To ensure you meet the requirements, Environmental Health Officers (known as EHOs) will periodically inspect your kitchen and food preparation areas. To maintain a good food hygiene rating, you must follow strict guidelines, which we’ve summarised into 10 simple rules:

HACCP stands for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, which every kitchen must consider. HACCP covers several core rules which should be followed to minimise food safety risks:

• Identify potential hazards
• Conduct regular hazard analyses
• Outline control measures, Determine Critical Control Points & critical limits
• Create a monitoring system & corrective plan
• Validate your HACCP plan and regularly review it
• Record and keep documents safe

Our website explains the HACCP principles and why following its procedures is important for running a safe industrial kitchen, food handling service, or food manufacturing site.

Use-by dates and shelf life labels should be applied to all kitchen food products, particularly foods requiring refrigeration. If you fail to do so, you risk serving out-of-date food to a customer, which could cause illness.

Note when a food item has been opened, the preparation date, and the use-by date of each item. You could also include allergen information and cooking instructions on each label. To label your items, you could use:

• Colour-coded day-of-the-week labels
• Date & time labels
• Plain labels on which you write your information

Food-contact materials (FCMs) are anything that comes into contact with your food, whether packaging, work surfaces, or equipment. Each FCM should also be food-safe to prevent the spread of bacteria, odours, or tastes in food items.

This will include both the sourcing and storage of these items. If you are sourcing food contact materials from a supplier, ask them for a 'declaration of compliance' before purchasing from them. If you are sourcing packaging and other food contact materials yourself, each item should display a ‘for food contact’ symbol of a fork and a wine glass:

To keep the public safe, effectively manage allergens in your kitchen. The most common and dangerous 14 allergens include:

1. Celery
2. Cereals containing gluten
3. Crustaceans
4. Eggs
5. Fish
6. Lupin
7. Milk
8. Molluscs
9. Mustard
10. Peanuts
11. Sesame
12. Soybeans
13. Sulphur Dioxide & Sulphites
14. Tree Nuts

Prevent severe allergies by storing allergen-safe foods separately, noting all ingredients used, cleaning regularly, and preparing allergens on separate chopping boards. Dedicate one member of staff to allergen management to help keep yourself and your staff organised.

The Food Standards Agency also offers helpful resources and advice for managing allergens.

Everyone handling food in your kitchen must maintain a high level of personal hygiene, regardless of their role. As an employer, you must provide protective and suitable clothing for the job, but each staff member should ensure that they maintain a clean appearance.

Long hair should be tied back, and any jewellery should be removed (wedding rings are an exception to this rule). Regular hand washing is paramount. Staff should wash their hands:

• Before entering the kitchen area & preparing the food
• In between handling different food items
• After using the bathroom
• After emptying a bin, removing food waste, or cleaning
• After sneezing, coughing, or blowing their nose
• After touching their face or hair
• After touching any item that isn’t sanitised or cleaned regularly (everyday items include a phone, switches, cash registers, and doors)
• After coming back from a break

In some circumstances, food handlers should not attend work to maintain good levels of personal and kitchen hygiene. Staff shouldn’t participate in work if they:

• Have vomited in the past 48 hours
• Have experienced diarrhoea in the past 48 hours
• Have open wounds or sores that aren’t dressed properly
• Are regularly coughing or sneezing
• Carry a food-borne illness, such as Gastroenteritis, Norovirus, or Salmonella, to name a few. 

Store food properly to prevent cross-contamination in your kitchen. Dry and canned goods should be stored in a well-ventilated area below 18°c to prevent moisture, which can cause mould to grow.

In a fridge, ready-to-eat foods and washed vegetables should be stored on the top shelf, followed by unwashed vegetables, raw meat and fish on the bottom shelf.

For your free fridge organisation guide, read one of our most recent blogs, ‘Food Safety: Fridge Storage & Organisation’. We discuss where raw meat should go and how to store washed and ready-to-eat foods.

Alongside personal hygiene, your kitchen should always be kept clean to prevent the growth of harmful bacteria and minimise cross-contamination. To keep your kitchen clean, you should:

• Wash chopping boards, knives, and other utensils with hot, soapy water
• Regularly disinfect & sanitise surfaces, ensuring enough contact time before wiping the disinfectant away
• Wash dishcloths, aprons, oven gloves, and other fabric items regularly
• Avoid washing raw meat

You should also encourage all staff members to ‘clean as they go’, which helps minimise chaos and mess in a busy environment. Cleaning as you go will involve periodically wiping down surfaces and disposing of wrappers, packaging, and food scraps as they appear.

The best way to kill bacteria is to ensure that your meat or fish is cooked thoroughly. If food is left undercooked, the remaining bacteria could cause food poisoning.

Use a meat thermometer to measure the internal temperature of your meat and fish. If you are unsure of how hot the inside of your food needs to be, we’ve created a handy guide for you to follow: 

Cooking food properly to prevent illness is one of the Four Cs. If you’d like to learn more about the Four Cs of Food Hygiene and what they mean, you might find one of our recent blogs helpful - ‘What are the Basic Food Hygiene Rules?’ 

It isn’t a legal requirement to have food hygiene training; however, it is legally required for anyone in a kitchen to be adequately trained. A Food Hygiene Certification is the best way to do this. Staff members should be trained to a level appropriate to their role in the kitchen. For example, sufficient training for a kitchen porter might include shadowing a team member for a day, whereas a kitchen manager should receive formal training at a high level.

If you work in a cafe, chip shop, restaurant, fast food outlet, mobile catering unit, hotel kitchen, hospital kitchen, school kitchen, college kitchen, or outdoor cooking event, our online Level 2 Food Hygiene certificate course is for you.

Our comprehensive online food hygiene training, starting at just £4.99, covers key rules for your kitchen, including the Four Cs, HACCP, temperature control, and personal hygiene.

If you have any questions, need advice, or would like to speak with a team member, please don’t hesitate to contact us.