Food-Safety Practices Revealed

As consumers continue to eat more meals away from home, the risk for contracting a foodborne illness at one of this country's estimated 925,000 restaurant locations increases. In the recently released "Food Safety Audit Trend Report," The Steritech Group, Inc., Charlotte, NC, presents audit data from 807 full-service restaurants in the United States. Citing concerns for a growing at-risk population, the report emphasizes the need to safeguard the food supply and offers this review as "a service to industry to assist in determining those areas where challenges routinely occur and to demonstrate the possibilities for improvement with management intervention."

The study was conducted in cooperation with the National Restaurant Association, Washington, D.C., and the audit format conforms closely to FDA's Food Code. Results are grouped according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's ranking of factors most-commonly associated with foodborne-illness outbreaks: No. 1, improper holding temperature; No. 2, poor personal hygiene; No. 3, inadequate cooking; No. 4, contaminated equipment; and No. 5, food from unsafe sources.

Each location was audited twice over a year's time. Results showed an overall decrease in violations, "substantiating the benefits of establishing a formalized food-safety program that places emphasis on educating employees on corrective actions," the report states. For example, there was a 33.8% decrease in the number of violations resulting from improper hand-washing practices and a 29.4% decrease in the number of violations related to food-contact surfaces and utensils being in good condition.

Three areas showed increases in the number of violations from one audit to the next. These included improper holding temperature issues for hot foods, proper cooking, and foods from approved source and in sound condition.

Steritech's report also includes a study of the time of day when violations occurred. This revealed an increase in several critical violations in the later parts of the day. In particular, the incidence of hot holding issues increased significantly in the afternoon. The report states that the "hot holding statistics definitively demonstrated a significant and troubling regression."

To download the document, log on to http://www.steritech.com/nav.cfm?cat=14&subcat=100&subsub=37&id=24.