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Serving it safe
Ronald R. Perkins CEC. CCE. AAC.
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Serve It Safe Gail & Ron Perkins April 2004
My husband, Ron, asked me if I would mind that he mention my recent and personal experience with cross contamination of food. Thinking it would be an embarrassment to me, with all of you knowing how Ron is such a stickler with sanitation procedures, he felt he had to ask. So, I am personally taking this opportunity to tell you that illness can and will visit anyone who gets even momentarily careless with food preparation because I never, ever thought I would be the cause of foodborne illness.
I have sat here many times editing one or another of the Serve It Safe articles and attended a refresher course on sanitation, so it was already apparent to me, even as a non-professional, that I can also do great harm. I have been in many restaurants and have seen a food service worker or chef improperly handling the very food I would be eating and declined, knowing the results would have been too predictable.
The great harm was done to me, by me, and resulted in several hours of illness that we will not detail here. You can use your imagination.
The meal involved chicken and I must have touched my finger to the edge of my lip sometime during the handling of the raw meat. I am confident I washed my hands thoroughly and many times during the breading of that chicken. In my mind, I had been very careful in every little thing but my body told me, many hours later, that I had done something wrong. The others in my family had no complaints so the error had to have been when I was handling the raw product and that meant I contaminated myself. I’d prepared this dish a thousand times. Who knew?
I should have known better! In all my years of cooking and serving meals for my family, (and for many others), this had never happened. And when it came to cleaning or preparing chicken, there was already a red flag there to remind me of how easily I could mess up. Was it overconfidence, a bad habit that finally caught up with me or was I really slipping? I told Ron I could now understand how an illness such as this could easily kill a child or older person since it had been hard for me to recover quickly. Our kitchen is clean, orderly and sanitized as often as necessary with those disposable wipes, so where did I go wrong? I had to ask my resident chef.
Once I better understood what had happened, it surprised me that I couldn’t initially make sense of it. Why hadn’t others who had eaten the same food gotten sick? It may have been just a small, unthinking touch to my lip, no big deal. I’m not sure what really happened but I am certain that I did it. Simply put, my sloppiness came back to haunt me.
This experience has very clearly taught me I cannot get too comfortable with routine procedures or there will be swift results. I followed the routine and knew all the rules, yet it was so easy to make myself ill. Just following procedure was not enough. It was pure lack of attention and carelessness. Period. Thank goodness no one else had to pay for my “mistake”. I don’t want to think what I could have done to someone else’s health yet this is something that will be ever present in my mind from now on. (Imagine how well-received I would be, especially being a chef’s wife, if the meal I cooked for the summer block party made the entire neighborhood ill.)
All of us who love to cook, whether a professional or not, cannot afford to be careless or take short cuts. It is easy to get complacent within any of our daily routines (and improperly handle food) but that also means it can come back to bite us. And it can dearly cost someone else.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- March 4, 2004
I just came from a conversation with a professional culinarian who told me it is too costly and time consuming to follow HACCP/ServSafe standards and that good sanitation is only a matter of common sense. He is young and the Executive Chef of a ????? and ????? chefs, always know more than Chef Educators, as we all know: “Can’t Cook, Then Teach Cooking”. The conversation seemed odd to me in light of the Chi Chi’s problem in Pennsylvania. (Hey, it isn’t a problem, it is a nightmare. Food served by our brothers and sisters can kill a couple of people.) At the start of February, I was a judge at the Ohio Pro Start culinary competition in Columbus and I was assigned sanitation for my area to judge. I watched eighteen high school culinary teams produce a menu in a short amount of time. Since my duty was to score them on their sanitation practices, it was quite revealing. First, in general, they did very well; each team seemed to have the basics of sanitation down quite well, much better than my own culinary training. Overall, if I’d had to assign a letter grade the lowest score would be a “B” and a couple of teams even an “A”. While watching the Food Network, I often marvel that the whole studio audience doesn’t become very ill after eating what some TV chefs cross-contaminate. The team that I rated with an “A” had great hand skills, which included hand washing; they washed, gloved and washed as well as any group that I have ever judged and I must say, were better than most professional teams in regard to their sanitation. They kept food cold and hot as needed, kept food protected with a cover or on ice, and did a really, near-perfect job. Here is why it wasn’t perfect: The team worked out of ice chests, each labeled and organized with the best mise en place(d) stores possible. The menu was very extensive and as time was running short, one student lifted the cover with his foot to open the cooler, caught himself, stopped and lifted the cover with his hand, realizing his hand/foot cross contamination and had the self control to stop and wash his hands before touching anything in the cooler. I think his action, with time running out, was the perfect thing to do. The real problem came as each and every member of the team also touched that possibly salmonella/e-coli contaminated cover as they went to finish their food. I know that the “?????” Chef will say it’s no big deal because the food was going to be cooked anyway, which in regard to two of the menu items was true, but both the salad and dessert required no cooking and without a CCP, the two courses could have made someone sick. The one foot/hand cross contamination resulted in 20 plus contaminations, of which most went to a cooking stage after the cross and the critical control of cooking stemmed their spread. But just like at the Chi Chi’s, it is often the cold food that can get you. I am happy to report that the judges that did eat food seemed to show no ill effects of sampling the menu as they judged. (Next time, I will tell them of the cross contamination before they taste. I would not want one of my fellow friends to become ill from something so simple and so easy to prepare as a salad. After all, it is only common sense!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Serving It Safe Ronald R. Perkins AAC November 2003
130 Diners Sickened in Hepatitis Outbreak (KnightRidder – as seen in the Akron Beacon Journal 11/04/03) At least 130 people contracted hepatitis A in an outbreak at a mall's Mexican restaurant, authorities said Thursday. The state Health Department is investigating the outbreak at Chi-Chi's Mexican restaurant at the Beaver Valley Mall, about 15 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. Officials suspect the virus was spread by a worker who failed to wash his or her hands before handling food. About 5,200 people have been immunized.
Well, it seems it is possible to cross-contaminate every living thing with disease-producing bacteria! Seems like a strong statement? Please read on. Years ago, while waiting for a sub sandwich from a not so fast sub place, I needed to get out of my heavy clothing-I was judging an ice carving contest on a very cold day in snowy Pennsylvania. While in the restroom, a young man was picking pimples in front of the sink mirror, spraying staph all over the place as he made interesting patterns on the mirror’s surface, which was o.k. because he was wearing gloves. I wondered at the time just how much toilet paper it was going to take to enable me to escape the restroom. I was once told by a sanitarian who was teaching ServSafe that it takes 101 sheets of toilet paper to prevent contamination. (I knew it was going to take at least that many to help me out of this restroom since I knew I would be touching the same door handle as he had.) As I got back in line for that sub sandwich, I noticed the person slicing the meat was the very same “staff” person. I got out of line and went to the register and asked for the manager, and guess who? The kid with the broken/dripping pimple was in charge that day, but hey, he was wearing gloves. Did I forget to mention that he picked and did not wash his hands or change his gloves? I stopped somewhere else for a chop steak on the way home that day. That scene is fresh in my mind even after years of trying to forget it. That was then, this is now. I was watching a young man prepare my cheeseburger, fresh to order, who also was wearing gloves. He was handling several orders at once, a couple of Texas Toast Grilled Cheese, Hamburgers, my Cheeseburger and a couple of Grilled Chicken sandwiches, and fries. Did I mention that he was wearing gloves? He opened the refrigerated burger drawer and removed by gloved-hand a couple of raw burgers, one being mine. Next, using the same gloved hand, he opened the refrigerated chicken drawer to remove a couple of breasts. I was lucky he didn’t go for the chicken and then the burgers. He placed the potentially hazardous protein onto the gas broiler to cook and then set up the paper food tray with the buns, (one being for my cheeseburger), with his gloved, protected hands. He flipped the burgers first then the chicken with a single spatula, and then flipped the Texas Toast Grilled Cheese, which were looking really nice. Next he patted my burger and the other burger as well, creating quite a little grease fire, placed the spatula down and got my cheese, using his right, glove-covered, already contaminated hand, to carefully place the cheese on top of my un-toasted bun. (I think a law should be passed that all cheeseburger buns should be toasted, but I digress, I guess). He flips the chicken, pats my burger a farewell pat and places it onto the un-toasted bun and presents it to me with that look of a job well done – plates both grilled cheese and moves onto the remaining chicken. (What the heck, I ate the cheeseburger.) There are a few points I hope to make... · Don’t hire kids and then make them managers without proper training. · Don’t approve the plans for a food operation that simply forces the employees to shortcut to get the job done. (The second scenario of the grill system, which was approved by the health department, is ripe for cross contamination.) · Train your “staff” well so that they don’t give “staph” to others. · Most people wear gloves to protect themselves from the food, not the food from themselves, a totally incorrect practice/attitude. Ohio’s food service code requires us to wear gloves for the preparation of food items. This law does not negate the necessity of proper hand washing procedures and in practice, we should change gloves as often as we need to wash hands. Wearing gloves does not give us license to be sloppy within our food handling routines. We need to teach proper hand washing each and every day in every way. Plastic gloves should not be allowed to give us a false sense of security. And we need to be really careful or we may find ourselves in print someday.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 2003
Recently, I’ve had time to walk with my wife throughout Cuyahoga Falls. We would walk twice daily, and in the evening, we’d walk between 4:30 and 7. After a couple of days, I noticed that I wasn’t “seeing” what I thought I should smell. I had expected to smell the aroma of my youth. You see, smell is our longest term memory. Smells, such as bacon and lilac bring images to mind in a flash. For me, lilacs were in my back yard in New Hampshire, and my Grandmother wore a lilac perfume. Whenever I smell bacon, a trip Gail and I made comes to mind with a large, white farmhouse on a dairy farm at around 4 a.m. where we wanted to stop for breakfast. It smelled so good We are still walking evenings and the lack of smell is overwhelming. It seems that no one is cooking at home anymore. It is so rare to smell a meatloaf or any food as we walk around. Is it possible that everyone is eating out or driving through? Well, if we are not cooking at home, who’s cooking where, because according to our waistlines we are eating, and eating large amounts! There are a couple of fast and not-so-fast food places in our neighborhood and they are packed at lunch and dinner times. Our local pizza delivery puts on a couple of extra drivers for the daily dinner rush. I must admit that now as the weather gets warmer, the smell of charcoal grills and the outdoor BBQ can be smelled often, so someone’s at home and cooking The NRA says that more and more meals are being eaten away from home every year; judging from our area, there are only a handful of people cooking at home. The USDA says that 27% of meals are consumed away from home-those are 1995 figures-so now, it must be more. I know that since it’s just the two of us at home, it seems we eat out more often now and we are rapidly beginning to hate “fast food”. Besides, it costs too much and is poor nutritionally The point of this for us is simple...each and every year we, as a profession, are responsible for more of the health of this nation. We are responsible for more and more illness. We are being blamed for large waistlines and poor health. I may have lost some of you with this last statement, but wait. In general, we serve for lunch or dinner, portions of protein that are larger than the daily recommended total amount. We present overloaded plates with large portions and wonder why no one buys those special, convenient super sweet desserts of 565 calories, on a painted plate of pure bottled caramel sauce for an additional 125 calories. We claim to be the “Authority on Food in America”, which we should be. We should stand tall as that Authority, and live up to its responsibility, by serving food safe, by serving food that is nutritious, and by knowing what we serve. I dare you to go into any restaurant anywhere in the area and ask this question: “What’s in it?”. It might be an indication of how well we are doing as the Authority!
School meals less safe WASHINGTON - Coming to school menus nationwide: Tainted burgers, fruit and other foods?Reported outbreaks of school-related food born illnesses have been rising about 10 percent a year, a congressional study said yesterday. The General Accounting Office recommended better coordination among the federal agencies that inspect food plants with the state and local agencies that buy most food for schools. Such outbreaks have been traced to a variety of products, including strawberries, milk, hamburgers, tomato sauce and fish sticks. ``Parents deserve a federal guarantee that the food their children eat at school is safe,'' said Rep. Janice Shakowsky, D-Ill. In 1999, the latest year for which figures were available, 50 school-related outbreaks were reported nationwide with 2,900 illnesses, the GAO said. Accounting for changes in reporting methods, the GAO estimated that reported outbreaks increased 10 percent annually in the 1990s. About 27 million meals are served in schools each day. Officials don't know how many outbreaks were caused by lunches served in cafeterias as opposed to food pupils brought from home, but it is believed that school-provided meals were the culprit in most of the cases. Of those outbreaks with known causes, most were linked to salmonella and Norwalk-like viruses, named for a town in Ohio where the dangerous virus was identified in the mid-1960s. In 1998, burritos produced in Chicago apparently sickened 1,200 children nationwide. In 1997, more than 300 children in five states became ill after eating strawberries harvested in Mexico and processed in California. The government has put price above safety in buying food, and that has ``resulted in school lunches becoming a dumping ground for ground beef and other agricultural products of questionable safety,'' Cheryl Roberts of Comer, Ga., told lawmakers at a joint hearing of House and Senate committees. Her son, then 11, became seriously ill in 1998 after eating an undercooked burger contaminated with E. coli O157:H7. The Agriculture Department heavily subsidizes school lunches and buys 17 percent of the food that is served. State and local agencies buy the rest. The USDA ``provides little guidance'' to those agencies to ensure that the food they are buying is safe, the GAO said. GAO officials also faulted the government's complex regulatory system for food. The USDA regulates meat, while the Food and Drug Administration has responsibility for most other foods. Neither agency has the authority to require companies to recall tainted products. USDA and FDA officials told lawmakers they are coordinating more closely to regulate food plants.
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It was a lazy Sunday morning and we decided not to go to church. We were up early and went out to breakfast, before the "Brunch" crowd arrived. As we walked into the restaurant, there were maybe six other tables seated and there was plenty of room for a nice, quiet breakfast with my wife. We were greeted by a 16 year old hostess, chewing gum, who seated us at a dirty table. I had asked for a large booth, (which was available), by the window. We-like most of you-are used to this. We started cleaning the crumbs off onto the floor and checked the coffee cup, looking for signs of the last user (which we did find). Then it struck me, a red and white comment-sized notice placed there on our table by the restaurant & bakery company for our reading enjoyment, and I quote: ""(Restaurant to remain nameless)" is not only committed to making great tasting food, we’re committed to serving it to you safely. The utmost care is taken in our food preparation, from cleaning it properly to cooking it sufficiently. In order to serve you the finest quality ground beef and steak, we comply with recent U.S.D.A. and state guidelines. All ground beef and steak items will be cooked medium well unless you request otherwise.* To comply with recent federal and state guidelines, eggs will be thoroughly cooked to 145º unless your request otherwise.* *Food that is under prepared can be hazardous to your health! Consuming raw or undercooked meats, poultry, seafood, shellfish or eggs may increase your risk of food born illness. At "(restaurant to remain nameless)", we take your faith and trust in us very seriously, and are looking out for your health and well-being with every delicious item we serve." We ordered coffee after having a cup replaced, and I ordered OJ. It came in a glass which the dish machine did not get fully clean-it had that all too familiar white film on it-and I hoped that the final rinse had been up to temperature. This chain has the servers roll the silverware in a paper napkin and place a logoed banner around it as a sign of something. In this case, it had been rolled wet and I had to peel the napkin off my set and my wife had to have her fork replaced. You think that two people who know something about food safety would have asked for a whole new set of silverware, because the fork was in contact with the spoon and knife (that cross contamination thing), but we didn’t. It was at this point that the food guy in me really started paying attention to what was (in most cases, was not) going on. This operation was not busy, nor was there a person on staff that looked over 21 years old. The server staff was standing around talking about stuff-my hearing is not so good so I can only imagine what they were talking about. What ever happened to: "if you have time to lean you have time to clean"? Did I mention that the red and white post card sized notice was in a filthy plastic holder? I was two other tables asked for new forks, why did the person who wrapped those, wrap dirty, chunky forks with what may have been clean knives and spoons? A customer was going to the breakfast bar with their plate from the first helping of food and had a nice talk with the attendant as he loaded his plate for the second time. Perhaps, the attendant was also the dishwasher and was saving on plates. Well, this critique could get really picky, but I’ll stop here. For me, this meal out reminds me of the responsibility I have to serve food safe in a clean environment. All the table tents, signs and training in the world will not and does not make a difference until we, as employees and professionals, decide to make a difference and do it right. I am sure that this restaurant chain has the best intentions, and a policy in place to do it right, but the human factor is letting them down. Oh, by the way, after a not so bad meal, on our way out I passed the manager gardening in the front of the restaurant. I guess she felt that someone may come in contact with poison ivy on the way in and blame the restaurant for making them sick!
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classes for over twenty years, the thought has often come to me: how do I
convey the necessary information to my students in such a way that the
material is taken in and educates them? Much of the information given at
times seems to not entirely be received in a useful way necessary to
transform them into a new mindset, a new set of skills, a new person. I have come to call this the "No is Not Equal to Know Theory". An example of this is hand washing, which I have written about way too much in this space, yet I STILL see people constantly cross-contaminating food. It seems to me, we all know how important hand washing is. We have the knowledge. This information has been received, but not caused us to change our habits. We have the information and since it is not put into use I think we have the "No" part of this theory down pat. Information given is information received, but not taken in-in such a way that causes us to change. It is simply knowledge that is useless to us, we "No" it. This really is not knowledge, nor is it education. It seems to be only stuff that floats around in that very large area we call a brain, and simply floats there. It has no other purpose for us at this point in time. Then there is that information that is given, received and causes us to change, by putting this information into use. Education seems to have taken place and this knowledge takes effect and causes us to change. When the change take place, that’s the time that we "Know" it. Sometimes information is given and the change does not become useful knowledge until something in our lives causes us to begin using it. An example is being confronted with the possibility of making people sick because of poor food handling on our part. Generally, we become better food handlers as a result of this confrontation. If we have used the knowledge, allowed that information about proper food handling to change us, we would have been better food handlers in the first place and perhaps not have had the necessary confrontation. Maybe, we would not have made our customers sick! Our profession has so much to know. Simple things like how to calibrate a pocket thermometer for proper use, (which should be done daily). We need to know how to properly use, clean and sanitize it, among other important measures. Do you calibrate daily? What proof do you have that you do? Do you carry Alcohol Prep Pads and use them? Your calibration log is stored where? (Do you have a "No or Know" answer to these questions?) What we "No" can hurt us! What we "Know" has made us better.
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In the past few months, it has become clear to me that this issue of safe and proper food handling is an elusive concept and a hard practice to master. The problem is major because it forces us to change what we have done for years. We are well practiced at what we do and it seems for the most part no one has become ill, so we think we are doing OK and why change? There is no sense of urgency, no major reason or pressure for us to act differently. I think I should tell you why this is clear to me. This past year, we have eaten out more often than in the past and I have had several opportunities to tour kitchens in schools, hotels, restaurants and a couple of nursing homes. While watching or working with the cooks of these operations, it seems most of these employees are my age or a little older, and it is clear that no one is training them! There are still cooks who leave the 16-pound frozen turkey out to thaw at room temperature overnight. Most of these people know about the temperature danger zone, but it’s not real knowledge to them-it is in fact "no" knowledge. Having a pocket thermometer, which has never been calibrated or correctly cleaned, is simply a tool used to cross contaminate one food to another. The other thing that makes this lack of urgency clear is the relaxed attitude on the part of management to have all of our culinary staff certified/trained in Serve Safe/HACCP or similar programs. I have met with six different groups of management over the past year and have come to more clearly realize how under-trained they are in these areas, even though most have been certified in one program or another. Several have told me they are "certified for life in Ohio". I’d like to propose to the membership that we as a chapter set a goal… 100% ServeSafe Certification… for each of us to be certified or if our certification is over three years old-to renew it within the next year. I will volunteer to teach the ServeSafe three-day class at cost and the one-day refresher course also at cost. Cost would cover the usage of space and materials from the National Restaurant Association. Plus, each and every one of our members would be able to bring at least one member of their staff and one manager from their operation to join them for these classes. I will be talking to the Akron Restaurant Association about joining us and have already spoken to Tom Welding from the Summit County Department of Health for additional support. Please feel free to contact me at 330.802.3291 or chefronp@aol.com with your suggestions and comments. I keep repeating this phrase because it makes sense: each one of us has the power in our hands to do great harm or great good. Let’s chose to do great good! Let us decide that we will be the best we can be, and order our lives to make these words, words of action and words of application. It can only improve our ability to serve our customers better and safer.
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Things that we may do that we should not do! While at a gathering of chefs, I saw several things that occur to me, are bad habits-things we do which could make others sick.
It is said that it takes 28 days to create a new habit and only three days to break one. We should all be planning to create good habits and plan it in such a way that we have the 28 days to make those good habits truly part of what we do. I think it’s best to publicly declare that I will do such and such. That forces me to do it or be embarrassed, which is something I try to avoid, not just for myself, but for the sake of my customers’ health. |