As food entrepreneurs we have the responsibility to make and sell safe food. The overwhelming wealth of information about how to make our food safe makes it hard to filter out the best way to make safe and tasty food.

The CDC’s five top foodborne illness risk factors which would be good to avoid if you are producing food for other people to eat. Start with these five when you are beginning to develop a new food product to ensure that it will be safe from day one. 

The top five risk factors towards causing a foodborne illness outbreak are:

1. Holding at an Improper storage
2. Cooking/processing at an improper temperature
3. Contaminated utensils and equipment
4. Poor Employee Health and Hygiene 
5. Food from Unsafe Sources

Over the next few weeks I shall write more about how we, as food entrepreneurs, can prevent each one of these five factors from happening in our processing facility. Make sure you are following this blog!!

Let’s start by looking at the Food Safety Partnership’s four steps that consumers must take to ensure their food is safe. There is quite a bit of overlap with the CDC factors. The recommendations for consumers are to cook, chill, clean, and separate. 

Cook is cooking to the right temperature

Chill is storing at the right temperature

Clean means not using contaminated utensils and equipment and WASH your damn hands

Separate means avoiding cross contamination and storing food so that raw meat juices, for example, aren’t dripping onto your lettuce

One thing we have all learned from COVID-19 is that public safety is being considered in ways it never was before. This means food safety is more important than in the past. Do not risk losing your business & potentially killing someone because of a silly food safety mishap – schedule your food safety chat now.

Be safe. Wear a mask. Wash your damn hands. Eat a healthy diet.

Remember: Food Safety First.

Non-compliance = Death