News

Category: Food Safety
Posted by: swisher

There are few operations in a restaurant where there is a better opportunity to minimize the growth of illness- and spoilage-causing bacteria than when it comes to the handling and processing of meat products. That’s because surfaces that come into routine contact with meat are particularly prone to bacterial growth, and the steps required to reduce that growth are both straightforward and affordable.

The key to properly protecting your restaurant is to engage in an active and ongoing program of sanitation. That’s because bacterial colonies, once established, can be very difficult to remove. Bacteria is inconceivably small – billions of them can live on the tiniest surfaces, and they’re especially good at inhabiting cracks and other small surface irregularities, so removal can be a real challenge. Biofilms, which is what these areas of contamination are called, can remain seemingly inactive for a while before erupting into large, dangerous blooms, contaminating everything they come into contact with, presenting a genuine risk to the health of employees and customers alike, and jeopardizing your entire business. Once established, the only way to effectively remove them is old-fashioned scraping. And scraping. And scraping some more.

That’s why you’re better off preventing their formation in the first place. You should establish an ongoing cleaning and sanitizing program – cleaning to remove dirt, debris and other residues, and sanitation to minimize the presence of microbes on your equipment’s surfaces.

When cleaning, it is critical to use solutions which cut through the grease and oils typically found in meat products. If a film of grease remains on the surface of machinery, countertops or other surfaces, it serves as a barrier that blocks sanitizers from reaching the bacteria that lurk underneath. And when that bacteria is exposed to additional food products over time, those products can fuel dangerous bacterial growth, creating hard-to-remove biofilms.

To ensure that your surfaces are cleaned properly, consider using either a high-pressure washing system and hot water or a manual spraying process that’s complemented by thorough abrasion (with brushes, steel wool or other scrubbing devices). Regardless of which process you choose, always follow up by rinsing thoroughly and then applying an effective sanitizing solution.

By “effective” we mean that you should ensure that your sanitizer is mixed to the proper concentration. Many contemporary kitchens are equipped with calibrated dispensing systems which ensure the correct dilution, but make sure to follow manufacturers’ directions and never substitute their recommended products with a different brand. If you don’t have one of these systems in place, your solution provider should be able to offer testing strips or other products so you can verify that your mix is correctly made, and the testing process usually takes no more than a few seconds.

Those few seconds are far more valuable than you might imagine. If the solution is ineffective, all of the steps that had gone before are of little use, because without an effective sanitizer to treat bacterial growth, you can be sure that microbes will find a way to flourish. That minor investment in time can translate into extraordinary savings, preventing the spoilage, illness, absenteeism, citations and litigation associated with contaminated meat products.