Overview

Safe food handling practices are important to ensure food is safe to consume. Australian food safety legislation requires food handlers working or volunteering at businesses to have skills and knowledge in food safety and hygiene appropriate for their work.

Food Safety

Be Clean and Careful

Practicing good hygiene is easy and is a good habit. Make sure to:

• Wash your hands with soap and dry them thoroughly.
• Don't let hair, clothing, jewellery or phones to touch food, or surfaces that will come into contact with food.
• Don't touch ready-to-eat food with bare hands, always use tongs if possible. If you must use your hands, wear gloves.
• Wear clean clothes and aprons.
• Tell your supervisor if you think you are sick or have contaminated food.

Preparing and cooking food safely:

• Keep raw meat cold.
• Handle food with tongs or other equipment, using separate equipment for handling raw and cooked meats.
• Cover food to protect it from contamination.
• Cook meat thoroughly, steaks can be cooked to preference if consumed straight away.
• Throw away left-over food unless refrigeration is available.

Always wash your hands:

• Before you start handling food or return to handling food after other tasks.
• Before handling cooked food.
• After handling raw food.
• After using the toilet.
• After smoking, coughing, sneezing, using a handkerchief or tissue, eating or drinking.
• After touching your hair or face.

Do not handle food if you have symptoms of a foodborne illness such as fever or diarrhea and alert your supervisor. 

Temperature Control

Temperature control is an important part of safe food handling. Safe temperatures for food are 5°C or colder, or 60°C or hotter. Potentially hazardous foods need to be kept at these temperatures to prevent food-poisoning bacteria from multiplying to unsafe levels. 

Foods that are considered potentially hazardous are:

• Meats and food containing meat.
• Dairy products and foods containing dairy products.
• Seafood and food containing seafood.
• Processed fruit and vegetables.
• Cooked rice and pasta.
• Processed food containing eggs, beans, nuts or other protein-rich food.
• Foods containing any of the above, such as sandwiches and some salads.

Foods that are not considered potentially hazardous do not need temperature control, but they still need to be properly packaged to prevent contamination.

Cooling Food

If pre-cooking food and cooling it, the food will need to be cooled rapidly to 5°C. National food safety standards require cooked food to be cooled to 5°C within 6 hours, within 2 stages. First the food needs to be cooled from 60°C to 21°C in 2 hours or faster. Then from 21°C to 5°C in four hours or faster. When cooling large containers of food it is good practice to split the food into smaller containers before refrigeration. This allows the center of the food to cool down quickly enough to be safe for consumption.

Reheating Food

When reheating food, it needs to be quickly and thoroughly heated until steaming hot and then kept hot until serving. Ideally food will be reheated to 70°C and maintained at that temperature for at least 2 minutes. Always use a thermometer to check the appropriate temperature has been reached.

Keeping Food Hot

Hot food needs to be kept hot (60°C or above) at the event, this can be achieved with bain-marie units, cooktops or in ovens. If displaying food to be served within a short period (Such as a temporary stall), it is safe to use a lower temperature so long as the food is used or sold within 4 hours. After 4 hours, the food will need to be thrown out.

Allergens

Some foods and ingredients can cause allergic reactions including anaphylaxis, immune reactions (such as Coeliac Disease) and other adverse health reactions such as asthma.

It is important to be aware of allergens that may be present in prepared food in case a consumer asks. The most common food allergies are:

• cereals containing gluten and their products – such as wheat, rye, barley, oats and spelt.
• shellfish, crustaceans and their products.
• egg and egg products.
• fish and fish products.
• milk and milk products.
• peanuts and peanut products.
• tree nuts and tree nut products – such as almonds and cashews.
• sesame seeds and sesame seed products.
• soybean and soybean products.
• added sulphites in concentrations of 10mg/kg or more.
• lupin and lupin products – such as flour and spreads.

Notifying Food Enforcement Agency

Selling food is a popular method of fundraising but every state and territory has their own rules for food businesses. While exemptions can be made not-for-profit organisations from registration/notification, it is generally a good idea to notify the relevant food enforcement agency.

If you are operating in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia or Western Australia, the enforcement agency is likely to be your local council. If your business is located in the Northern Territory or the Australian Capital Territory, the enforcement agency will be your local health department.

Note: Not all States and Territories provide exemptions