NAVIGATING FOOD SAFETY THROUGH THE SEASONS
Every season fills your life with its uniqueness. Everything changes in your life according to the season. Changes in safe food handling practices top the list of things that change every season. These changes determine the level and quality of your customers’ health.
All seasons bring different challenges that impact the health of food items. These challenges affect the health of almost 4 million consumers every year. Thousands of them visit medical care facilities as a result. Not everyone goes back home alive! That’s a bitter reality!
We think you must know these challenges. The level and quality of your knowledge about issues related to food safety help address food health concerns in many ways. You will realise it through this guide.
For this reason, we think you must know the food-handling challenges that come with every season. Continue reading this post to learn about these food safety challenges season-by-season.
The List of Seasons In Canada:
This is the first thing you need to know before we get to the point. Canadians experience four seasons every year. Spring, summer, fall, and winter are those seasons.
- Spring Season Food Health Concerns In Canada:
Weather temperature fluctuates frequently during the spring season. This fluctuation results in inconsistent refrigeration, bacterial growth, fungal contamination, water contamination, pest infestation, chemical residue, food transportation delay, and dirty food storage facilities. All these food health concerns impact the quality of food items and consumers’ health. The list does not end here only.
- Spring Season Safe Food Handling Tips:
Many people face hell in the form of diarrhea, infections, food poisoning, and meningitis during the spring season. Harmful bacteria, pathogens, viruses, and germs deserve credit for spreading these food-borne illnesses.
We don’t want your customers to face these health problems. We want your customers to live their life to the fullest.
We want you to climb the success and growth ladder as a safe food-handling expert in Canada. We wish to see your business getting in the good books for all the good reasons.
- Use High-quality material in your kitchen.
- Use high-quality materials to get your food storage space ready.
- Spend time and money regularly for proper maintenance of the kitchen.
- Value regular cleaning of food storage utensils and everything installed in the kitchen.
- Ask all your employees to pay attention to their personal hygiene every day and throughout the day.
- The use of a food thermometer is a great safe food handling practice.
- Keep track of how long food has been sitting out.
- Never store ready-to-eat foods and raw meats next to each other.
- Keep track of how long food has been stored.
You can learn all these practices during your food safety certificate course in Canada. The implementation of these practices will help you keep food items safe during the Canadian spring season.
- Summer Season Proper Food Storage Tips:
Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) receives 2035 consumer food safety complaints every year. Most of these complaints are directly related to extraneous materials found in food items. Then comes the number of food allergies and allergens, chemicals, microbiologicals, and other issues.
Harmful bacteria, pathogens, viruses, and germs faster during the summer season. For this reason, the chances of health nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, cramps, fever, chill, fatigue, weakness, headache, muscle ache, and other food-borne illnesses to your customers multiply significantly.
Therefore, you and your staff should implement the following tips:
- Earn your food safety certificate first.
- Avoid keeping food at room temperature for more than an hour during summer days.
- Perishable foods should be kept cold.
- The temperature of your cooler with an ice pack should be below 4°C if you are storing food during your travel time.
- Keep your cooler away from direct sunlight.
- Don’t open your cooler often.
- Marinate meat in a cooler filled with ice-pack.
- Store your raw meat, poultry, and seafood separate from other foods and beverages.
- Value and personal hygiene practices.
- Clean your kitchen, countertop, and utensils using soap.
- Rinse utensils with water.
- Sanitise the kitchen and everything in it.
- Cook foods at the right temperature.
- Wash hands regularly to value personal hygiene.
- Always wearing clean aprons and clothes.
- Taking showers every day.
- Refrigerate leftover food items immediately.
- Fall Season Proper Food Storage Tips:
Fall is a season of fun for everyone. Canadians love the fall season. They love to enjoy apple pies, pumpkin pies, hearty soups and golden skies during their picnic season. What makes their picnic special is the way you pack, store and handle food items prepared for them. You are advised to follow the following tips that help address food health concerns during the fall season to help make your picnics more fun:
- Get your food safety certificate first.
- Thaw frozen meats in refrigerators with safety.
- Do you love marinating meats? First, store them in a refrigerator, and then transfer them into a cooler.
- Wash everything properly with clean hands before your proceed to the refrigeration process.
- Never pack raw meats with ready-to-eat foods.
- Value the implementation of personal hygiene practices.
- Try to maintain the temperature of hot food. Meaning, keep hot food items hot and cold food cold.
- Never work if you or your employees are sick.
These tips will help your customers keep their food items safe for a long period. They will be able to enjoy their picnic.
- Winter Season Proper Food Storage Tips:
The Canadian winter season marks the beginning of the festive season throughout the nation. Every Canadian loves this season. They wait for the winter season eagerly to enjoy their food outings with their family, friends, and colleagues. It is the perfect time for you to put your food cooking, handling, temperature control, and storage practices to use in the best possible way. The value of safe food handling multiplies for several reasons in Canada during the winter season. For example:
- Bulk cooking in Canada is a custom during holiday feasts. The value of proper cooking, maintaining appropriate food temperature, and avoiding cross-contamination reach the next level during this season.
- Proper food storage is important to deal with power outages. Frequent electricity breakdowns and storms make it difficult to store food safely.
- Harmful pathogens grow fast in frozen foods during the winter season. You must learn the art of thawing frozen foods safely. Make sure you learn the following thawing arts:
- Refrigerator thawing.
- Cold water thawing.
- Microwave thawing.
- Value food type and time constraints at play for it.
- Many Canadian baking recipes include ingredients like eggs. The mishandling of such ingredients raises salmonella risk. You must learn proper cooking and cooling food techniques to eliminate such a health hazard.
- We suggest you enroll yourself in a food safety certificate course to master these tips. This course will help you grow your food business in Canada. Food industry professionals get a chance to master the following food safety arts. For example:
- Proper food storage.
- Thawing.
- The art of preparing high-risk foods.
- The best cooking and reheating practices.
- Methods to deal with power outages.
Your career and food business will reach the next level for sure. The list of things you will learn through this certification course includes safe food handling practices, personal hygiene practices, tips related to time and temperature controls, proper use of a thermometer, allergies and allergens, proper food storage practices, the art of cooking and cooling foods, housekeeping and sanitation practices, microbiology, growth of microorganisms, and related food health concerns, and HACCP.
Do you want to enroll in it? Fill out the quick application form. All it takes is a couple of minutes of your schedule. Do you have any questions about the course? Visit our website or Call us right away! We will answer all your questions instantly!
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