Food Safety: Practice Good Personal Hygiene

Good personal hygiene, especially hand washing, is critical to food safety!

The first step is to not contaminate the food. Contaminants include biological, chemical, and physical hazards.

The food received may be safe and free from biological contaminants. But, if an employee does not wash his/her hands after using the restroom and then works with food, he/she has contaminated the food and it is no longer safe.

The food received may be free of physical contaminants. But, if an employee does not restrain his/her hair, wears jewelry, wears a bandage without a glove, etc. and any of those items get in the food, the food has a physical contaminant. Many of the personal hygiene polices are an attempt to keep physical contaminants out of the food. An addition concern is that these physical contaminants frequently carry biological contaminants as well.

As discussed previously, poor hand washing is also a frequent contributor to cross-contamination.