Training - Visualize & Personalize
Education and motivation are again key components in training staff on keeping those surfaces TouchReady™ and avoiding unneccesary Read more about Training - Visualize & Personalize
HandsOn™ System
5 steps to convert underwashing handwashing to under control handwashing. Set and track your risk-based ServeReady® Hands and TouchReady® Surface standards.
SaniTwice® Handwashing for Catered Events
Uncompromized handwashing hand cleanliness for those serving food at venues without running water.
Teaching Videos
Globally recognized for their ease of use in any language. Available in DVD and MP4 file download.
Leadership Forum Members
Optimize - Equipment, Products & Procedures
Always look for ways to make it easier for the staff to do the right thing. Set procedures to make sense and be as intuitive as possible. Read more about Optimize - Equipment, Products & Procedures
Setting Safe Levels
Risk Assessment
Good surface hygiene is critical to any and all foodservice operations. Read more about Risk Assessment
TouchReady™ Surface Cleanliness System
ATP ... when clean to sight and touch is not enough.
Every surface touch in a professional kitchen, restroom and service area is different and carries an unknown risk factor for contaminating the hands, bare or gloved. These hands in turn can contaminate the food or another person directly. Grouping these touches, with the HACCP principle in mind, is a good first step - prioritizing those touches that must trigger a handwash and a specific hand hygiene regimen.
Read more about TouchReady™ Surface Cleanliness SystemMonitoring - The Foundation of Motivation & Sustainable Change
In foodservice as in most endeavors, What gets measured gets done. Read more about Monitoring - The Foundation of Motivation & Sustainable Change
Training - Visualize & Personalize
Educate, Motivate & Train
Equipment: Basic Needs & Prorities
Make a Realistic Plan
Equipment: Facing the Less Than Ideal
Helping find practical, affordable answers
Murphy's Law: If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong.
Mann's Mandate: Hey! don't forget to wash your hands.
The purpose of this section is to provide suggestions and advice on common problems faced by food service operators as they relate to good hand hygiene.
Read more about Equipment: Facing the Less Than IdealOptimize - Equipment, Products & Procedures
Always look for ways to make it easier for the staff to do the right thing. Set procedures to make sense and be as intuitive as possible. Read more about Optimize - Equipment, Products & Procedures
Setting Safe Levels
Start With An Approximation
The TouchReady™ Risk Assessment and Training Tool
To Wash or Not to Wash? That is the Question ... and it's not answered in the Model Food Code.
The FDA can't make those decisions but an operator must, every single shift. In a study done by the CDC (J Food Prot. 2006 Oct;69(10):2417-23), it is estimated that 8.6 handwashes per hour worked is required to meet The Model Food Code which treats all touches as the same risk.
This exercise is designed to help categorize the daily touches in a foodservice environment and set up a decision support system for the Person-In-Charge (PIC) based on science and human behavior. The outcome is TouchReady™ Surfaces, a foundation for ServeReady™ Hands. For most operations, 8-9 handwashes per hour is unrealistic, thus, which handwashes will be skipped?
Each surface touched by a food handler carries a different risk of contaminating that food. These must be grouped to facilitate the setting of risk-based standards and the establishment of cleaning protocols with their frequency. Measurement technologies must be agreed between Operations and Quality Assurance in preparation for documentation and the sharing of results with those accountable for cleaning, handwashing and Risk Management.
This is HACCP, risk-based handwashing, sorting out the priority touches that must trigger a handwash.
SaniTwice® in Journal of Food Protection “…equivalent or superior to hand washing”
SaniTwice is simply a very effective two step protocol for washing hands in water-scarce situations. It is a friction-aided cleaning step coupled with a kill step.
From the report recently published in the Journal of Food Protection:
The SaniTwice method for hand disinfection was equivalent or superior to hand washing with soap and water for reducing viable bacteria on hands in the presence of representative food soils. Although the raw hamburger was a more difficult soil to penetrate, as demonstrated by approximately 1.0-log lower reductions compared with challenge by contaminated beef broth, the SaniTwice method with ABHS was equivalent to hand washing even under this worst-case simulation, underscoring the efficacyof this new method and indicating a potentially greater margin of safety. Read more about SaniTwice® in Journal of Food Protection “…equivalent or superior to hand washing”
Documenting Surface Cleanliness with Mark 'n Monitor™
Handsinks & Cantaloupes: Bringing The Farm To The Fork
If anyone ever questioned why the Handwashing Only directive is important for specified kitchen handsinks, consider this "poster child" example.
This restaurant is blessed with a handsink perfectly located at the entrance to the prep area. Wait staff pass by it to pick up nearly every order and bussers file by on their trips to the dish machine. But it's a deep sink, perfect for scrubbing the cantaloupes which are heavily used as garnishes from breakfast through dinner in a neighborhood with a full complement of senior citizens.
Two health department reminder posters are not enough to keep staff from cleaning those cantaloups in a task-perfect sink, blocking the would-be frequent handwashers.
Read more about Handsinks & Cantaloupes: Bringing The Farm To The ForkPages
HandsOn™ System
5 steps to convert underwashing to under control. Set and track your risk-based ServeReady® Hands and TouchReady® Surface standards.
SaniTwice® for Catered Events
Teaching Videos
Globally recognized for their ease of use in any language. Available in DVD and MP4 file download.