A bulletin for the Australian Food Industry    March 1995

Contents: Raw materials - the impact of biotechnology on food crops | New labelling requirements for cheese | Chlorine and drinking water | Safe food handling | Self-serve salad bars

Safe food handling

The National Food Authority has issued a discussion paper, Safe Food Handling-Australia, to mark the development of uniform food hygiene regulations in this country. The reforms outlined in the paper comprise a food hygiene standard to be incorporated into The Food Standards Code and complementary codes of practice and guidelines.

Monitoring safety at each stage of food handling will take precedence over preoccupation with such matters as the physical characteristics of food premises. Food safety plans are discussed in the paper, including for small businesses. The approach the National Food Authority is adopting to safe food handling reflects the change in emphasis toward food hygiene regulation being shown in USA, Europe and New Zealand.

In the US the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) is considering whether to introduce HACCP inspection systems in all food areas under their jurisdiction. HACCP is a preventive measure inspection program that assesses hazards, estimates risks, and establishes specific control measures that emphasise prevention rather than reliance on end-point testing.

The Agency is seeking an input from industry on a number of issues including whether a HACCP rule should apply to food retailers and how a mandatory HACCP rule should be applied to small firms.

In the United Kingdom, draft Regulations implementing the EU Food Hygiene Directive (94/43/EEC.) emphasise a risk-related approach to ensuring food safety and incorporate new requirements for food businesses to assess and control hazards and to train food handlers in food hygiene. It is proposed to introduce new food temperature controls to form part of the regulations. The proposed new controls would abolish existing complexities regulating foods subject to chill control and set a single maximum chill temperature of 8°C, removing the current two-tier controls at 5°C and 8°C.

Many food businesses will still continue the good practice of holding food at lower temperatures than the maximum permitted.

It is clear that hazard management will become an integral part of food hygiene control measures. Food businesses will increasingly become responsible for the design and operation of their own control systems.