Food Safety. It's Everyone's Business.

Although each person who works in our production commissary and school kitchens have a multitude of job duties, all good service personnel have one common responsibility; food safety. Whether you're working directly in meal participation, transporting and delivering the meals or serving the meals at a school, it is the obligation of each of us to always follow the strict set of food safety guidelines that must be adhered to from receiving of products, to preparation, delivery and the serving of the meals.

To ensure that all of the food and milk we serve remains safe to consume, we have gone to great lengths to educate both our Variety associates as well as school service personnel on food safety standards and practices.

For those of you who attended one of our opening school year orientations, the attendees had the opportunity to listen to our key speaker Mr. Larry Lucas, of PIC Food Safety, who provided some necessary reminders to all of us on many of the everyday events that can increase the likelihood of a food borne likeness to occur. Specifically, he discussed the proper way to store raw foods, how to calibrate thermometers so they read correctly, why it's so critical to not allow people to work in kitchens when they're sick, and most importantly the proper steps in washing and drying hands.

In addition, each of our Customer Service Representatives will again conduct food safety training inservices for all food service employees, regardless of whether they work for the school or Variety. We primarily use the ServSafe Food Handler's Guide as our key training tool. ServSafe is an accredited food and beverage training program administered by the National Resturaunt Association.

All food service establishments, schools included, must have a person on the food service team who is ServSafe certified and to support that requirement, we have contracted with PIC Food Safety to conduct both the ServSafe training and test to earn certification.

With each issue of Food For Thought we will address a various aspect of food safety. If you have any topic requests, please speak with your CSR.