What is cross-contamination?
Preventing cross contamination is an important part of food hygiene management. The “Food Safety Operation Code for Catering Services” explains that cross contamination refers to the process of mutual transfer and diffusion of biological or chemical contaminants between food, practitioners, tools, containers, equipment, facilities, and environment.
How to prevent cross-contamination?
1. Special items for special purposes: semi-finished products and finished products are stored separately
1.1-Use different tools for raw and cooked food
- Designating specific utensils, cutting boards, and equipment for raw materials (such as meat and seafood) and cooked or ready-to-eat foods. This prevents pathogens in raw food from contaminating cooked food.
1.2-Color coding system
- Implement a color coding system for tools and equipment. For example, red is used for raw meat, blue is used for cooked food, and green is used for vegetables. This visual distinction helps workers quickly identify the appropriate items to use
2. Distinguish cleanliness: isolate work areas
2.1-Zoned production areas
- Establish separate areas for handling raw and cooked food. This physical separation reduces the risk of cross-contamination and allows targeted cleaning procedures to be implemented in each area.
2.2-Dedicated storage
- Use separate storage areas for raw and cooked food, including separate refrigeration equipment (if possible). This ensures that raw food does not come into contact with ready-to-eat products.
Prevent cross-contamination caused by hands
Hands are important food contact surfaces. Employees use their hands to split, sort, mix, and so on. At the same time, in food workshops, many food contact surfaces need to be cleaned, production equipment is operated, waste is removed, and records are filled out by hand.
How to prevent cross-contamination caused by hands?
1. Correct hand washing and disinfection
- Hands should be cleaned and disinfected in a timely and correct manner to avoid contamination of products and food contact surfaces by unclean hands.
2. Do not touch yourself actively
- During the production process, we cannot actively touch ourselves, including the face, nose, etc. Because the face, nose, etc. have not been cleaned, there are many bacteria. If the hands are touched, the hands will be contaminated.
3. Do not touch indirect contact surfaces
- Do not actively touch indirect contact surfaces, such as walls, door curtains, etc. The cleanliness of these contact surfaces is relatively poor.
4. Do not touch unclean surfaces
- During the operation, processing personnel should not touch the hidden corners of the workshop trash cans or equipment, such as the gaps in the operating table, or the holes in the shovel. During the production and processing state, do not try to open the interior of various production equipment, which may affect the operation of the equipment, contaminate the product, and may also contaminate the hands of employees, or even hurt their hands.
5. Wash hands and disinfect in time
- If our hands are contaminated for various reasons, we should wash our hands in time, otherwise, cross-contamination may occur.
Prevent cross-contamination caused by cleaning
Cleaning is to remove dust, food residues, dirt, grease or other substances to be removed. The cleaning process is the process of removing pollutants, but if the cleaning process is not standardized, new contamination will occur, including cross-contamination. Cross-contamination may come from cleaning tools, cleaned contact surfaces, and the surrounding environment.
In order to prevent cross contamination caused by cleaning, it should be controlled at different stages before, during and after cleaning.
1. Before cleaning, choose appropriate cleaning tools and cleaning equipment. In order to prevent cross contamination, many workshops will specify areas with different cleanliness levels and use different cleaning tools, such as towels and scrapers of different colors, or specify special cleaning tools and equipment.
2. Arrange cleaning in appropriate cleaning areas. For example, during the shift, tools should be cleaned in the tool cleaning room. It is not advisable to arrange large-scale cleaning in open areas to avoid sewage splashing and pollution to the surrounding environment.
3. During cleaning, the following details should be paid attention to:
- 3.1: Pay attention to the order of cleaning to avoid re-contamination of the cleaned area
- 3.2: Pay attention to prevent splashing pollution. During wet cleaning, some companies will use high-pressure water guns for flushing, and water is easy to splash, causing pollution transfer.
4. When cleaning tools, they cannot be mixed for cleaning. For example, the turnover baskets for raw materials cannot be mixed with the turnover baskets for finished products to avoid cross-contamination. In addition, large-scale cleaning activities such as foam cleaning should usually be carried out after the shift, not during the shift, to avoid chemical pollution caused by foam drift.
5. Store utensils separately after cleaning
After cleaning, turnover baskets for different purposes should be placed separately. In addition, cleaning utensils should be stored separately. After cleaning, cleaning utensils should also be stored separately after cleaning.
