Safer Food, Better Business

Measuring Food Temperature The Food Safety (General Food Hygiene) Regulations, 1995 require proprietors of food businesses to ensure food safety. You must identify potential food hazards and prevent these hazards causing harm to consumers.

To make sure your food products are safe you should put in place a food safety system. This system may be known as “Hazard Analysis” or “Risk Assessment”. This allows you to identify hazards and put measures into place to prevent them from occurring.

You must make sure that safety procedures are identified, implemented, maintained and reviewed on the basis of the following:

Analyse potential food hazards
Identify the points where hazards may occur
Decide which points are critical to ensuring food safety
Implement effective control and monitoring of those points
Review all the above when any operations change

A food hazard is anything that can cause harm to the consumer. The main hazards are:

Pathogenic bacteria (ie: salmonella, campylobacter) and other micro-organisms that cause food poisoning
Chemical contamination i.e. from cleaning materials
Physical contamination such as glass, hair, insects etc

The analysis of potential hazards in your business should prevent food from becoming contaminated.

Every food business has different hazards depending on the food produced and the method of preparation and cooking. The greatest hazard related to a food business is pathogenic bacteria, which can contaminate and/or grow in food to harmful levels. This is dangerous in foods that will receive no further heat treatment prior to consumption (High risk foods).

Whilst the responsibility to ensure the safety of food served to customers rests firmly with the proprietor of a food business, Bracknell Forest Borough Council have produced a Self-Help Guidance Pack for the Small Caterer. Working through the guidance pack together with the other downloads on the right and the Food Standard Agency's ' A Guide to Food Hazards and Your business' leaflet (see Further Information) will assist you in complying with the Regulations.

A template is provided on the right to help you identify the main hazards in your business and the points which are critical to ensuring food safety. You will then be able to put in place controls necessary to prevent the hazards from occuring.

Monitoring of food temperatures on a daily basis is an important way for you to confirm that your controls are working properly. Bracknell Forest Borough Council have produced a Temperature Monitoring Records sheet to assist you (also available on the right).

Should you require any further advice or assistance please view our Further Information web page or contact the Commercial Team using the contact details on the right.