Importance of Food Hygiene Training
Let’s start with a statistical fact. According to the UK Food Standards Agency, there are over 500,000 cases of food poisoning found per year, and all of these are caused by bacteria food contamination or poorly cooked food. Contaminated foods can raise serious health concerns with deadly consequences. So, the importance of food hygiene training can easily be understood.
The food business owners and the workers or employees who work with or around food are bound by the law to understand their food safety responsibilities. Food hygiene training can ensure that you and your team have the necessary skills and knowledge to maintain food safety.
Continue reading as I’m going to dig deeper on the importance of food hygiene training and the related aspects of it.
What is Food Hygiene & Safety?
Illness-causing bacteria, viruses, parasites or chemicals may cause food contamination. And, the food contamination may occur at any stage of its production, processing, distribution, storage and preparation.
Food safety is used as a scientific discipline that describes all the practices which are used to keep the food safe. The term labels the process of handling, preparing, and storing food in ways that prevent food-borne illness.
The Importance of Food Hygiene
Food hygiene and safety is essential in many ways. Following are some keynotes on the importance of food safety.
- Foods contaminated by bacteria, viruses and parasites can cause food poisoning. Food poisoning can create serious health hazards.
- Gastroenteritis and dehydration are often caused by food poisoning. Food poisoning may lead to more severe health problems like kidney failure.
- Contaminated food items may not look, taste or smell different than regular food items. Without proper knowledge of food safety you can’t spot the difference.
- Babies, children, older people and pregnant women are more vulnerable to food poisoning as they have a weaker immune system.
What is Food Hygiene Training?
Through good food hygiene practices, we can easily avoid foodborne illnesses that arise from eating contaminated food. Food handlers who have proper and adequate knowledge of food safety and hygiene can maintain this good practice.
A food hygiene training equips food handlers with the qualification that relates their knowledge to their work environment. The training is not only to teach food handlers or business owners about food safety but also to familiarise with the procedures to follow during a food hygiene inspection.
Why is Food Hygiene Training Important?
It is the requirement of the law that food businesses need to provide their workers with an adequate understanding of food safety. The training can minimise the risk of food contamination, and it can establish a suitable safety system in the kitchen or food-handling areas. Through good food hygiene training, a food handler is to get proper knowledge of food handling, storage, cooking temperature, and cleaning techniques.
Proper food hygiene practice ensures that customers don’t get affected by food poisoning and allergic reactions. Minimising food waste and boosting the efficiency of the food handlers are some of the fantastic benefits of food hygiene training.
Following are some more on the benefits of food hygiene training:
Preventing Cross-Contamination
Spillages and cross-contamination are two of the significant ways of spreading harmful bacteria within kitchen or food-handling areas. Even the smallest amount of cross-contamination can create a severe issue of allergic reaction and food poisoning.
Food hygiene training will familiarise learners with different types and scenarios of cross-contamination and teach them how to minimise the risk.
Reducing Food waste
Pests or vermin are attracted by food waste, and they can develop dangerous food poisoning bacteria. That’s why proper waste management come into work. It is also a prerequisite for the excellent food safety management system. Poor waste management can cause many food safety hazards. It may even grow natural toxins in food.
Training on food hygiene will equip the learners with the proper knowledge of food storage and organisation. They will learn how to ensure the quality of food and reduce food waste. An appropriate understanding of food waste management will save the business time and money.
Building a Well-designed kitchen
You might wonder – “why a well-designed kitchen is important to ensure food hygiene?” It is. This is the place where your hard work, strategy, passion, and creativity comes into operation to create a meal for your customer. In a well-designed kitchen, you can keep everything organised and clean which is the essential requirement of food hygiene and safety.
Proper training on food hygiene is to help to build a well-designed kitchen.
Improving the Efficiency of Food Handlers
It is no wonder that poor efficiency in any business is due to the lack of training. It is also true for food business. If your staffs are aware of their duties and responsibilities, the workflow will become better.
So, proper food hygiene training can help in this way to improve the efficiency of your workers or employees.
Creating a Positive Culture
Food hygiene training will make you familiar with the good practices of hygiene at your workplace. Once you’ve started to follow the rules of hygiene, it will reduce the risk of sickness and allergic reactions. Over time, this practice will become a workplace culture and motivate the employees to follow them.
Building a Positive Reputation of Business
In the food business, the trust of the consumers is the most important thing to make a good reputation. If your business upholds good hygiene practices, your customers are to recognise your effort and hard work to ensure food hygiene and safety.
Food hygiene training helps the staffs to learn the importance of positive reputation in a food business and how to earn it.
Conclusion
In today's world, food hygiene and safety is an international challenge that needs to be overcome. Food will never be risk-free, but the food industry needs to act to keep the risk at a minimum level. In addition, familiarise with food hygiene and know the process of maintaining food safety will lower the risk of foodborne hazards.
In this article, I have tried to present the importance of food hygiene training by familiarising you with different aspects of food hygiene and provide readers with the notion that why this buzzing term is so important for the food industry. There are many online training on this topic that can help you get a better understanding of food hygiene and safety.
Hope, you’ve enjoyed reading this. Eat safe and be healthy!
