Effect of a Manager Training and Certification Program on Food Safety and Hygiene in Food Service Operations

Abstract

Food safety is an important public health issue in the U.S. Eating at restaurants and other food service facilities increasingly has been associated with food borne disease outbreaks. Food safety training and certification of food mangers has been used as a method for reducing food safety violations at food service facilities. However, the literature is inconclusive about the effectiveness of such training programs for improving food safety and protecting consumer health. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of food manger training on reducing food safety violations. We examined food inspection reports from the Toledo/Lucas County Health Department (Ohio) from March 2005 through February 2006 and compared food hygiene violations between food service facilities with certified and without certified food managers. We also examined the impact on food safety of a food service facility being part of a larger group of facilities.Restaurants with trained and certified food managers had significantly fewer critical food safety violations but more non-critical violations than restaurants without certified personnel. Institutional food service facilities had significantly fewer violations than restaurants, and the number of violations did not differ as a function of certification. Similarly, restaurants with many outlets had significantly fewer violations than restaurants with fewer outlets, and training was not associated with lower numbers of violations from restaurants with many outlets. The value of having certified personnel was only observed in independent restaurants and those with few branches. This information may be useful in indicating where food safety problems are most likely to occur. Furthermore, we recommend that those characteristics of institutional and chain restaurants that result in fewer violations should be identified in future research, and efforts made to apply this knowledge at the level of individual restaurants.

Reported behavior, knowledge and awareness toward the potential for norovirus transmission by food handlers in Dutch catering companies and institutional settings in relation to the prevalence of norovirus

“…Other prerequisites considered essential in limiting the presence of NoV in kitchens, e.g. providing hand wash instructions to new employees, having separate bathrooms for staff personnel, having hand wash facilities within the bathroom and using singleuse wipes for hand drying (FAO/WHO, 2012) were in the present study better in place in institutional settings than in catering companies as in line with other studies on general food hygiene issues (FDA, 2009;Kassa, Silverman, & Baroudi, 2010;Strohbehn et al, 2008).…”

“…Despite the different determinants in the separate settings, one could also argue for training on all important aspects of NoV according to the recommendations in the recently developed Codex Alimentarius guidelines to control viruses in food (FAO/WHO, 2012). Such programs should learn from experiences gained during evaluations of training programs on hand washing practices (Green et al, 2007;Pragle, Harding, & Mack, 2007), on general food safety issues (Egan et al, 2007;Kassa et al, 2010;York et al, 2009) or, in a broader perspective, on effectiveness of programs on surface cleaning in institutional settings (Goodman et al, 2008;Matlow, Wray, & Richardson, 2012) or reducing of infections rates (Schweon, Edmonds, Kirk, Rowland, & Acosta, 2013). Although training and intervention had the intended result in some of these studies, education alone did not always result in improved hand washing practices or improved food safety practices (Egan et al, 2007;Green et al, 2007;Pragle et al, 2007;York et al, 2009).…”

Viral contamination by food handlers and recommended procedural controls

“…Institutional food service facilities placed a higher value on formal food safety training than did restaurants (Strohbehn et al ., 2008 ) and committed signifi cantly fewer violations than restaurants (Kassa et al ., 2010 ). Given the high turnover of largely part-time workers, lack of training in food safety in restaurants is not surprising.…”

Risk assessment of lead and cadmium on Juveniles of Cyprinus carpio in laboratory scale

“…The accumulated metals in fishes are transferable to humans through the food chain. Fish safety, just as food safety, is an important public health issue because humans can develop numerous diseases from the consumption of contaminated fish [5].…”