5 Food Safety Culprits & How to Eliminate Them

Foodservice operators have an exhausting yet inexhaustible list of safety concerns unique to their line of work: slick floors, heavy loads, fast foot traffic, dull and sharp knives, heat from ovens and cooktops, heat in coolers and walk-ins, line cooks with head colds, and unspeakable encounters with rodents or insects. Those are just a few conditions that are caused by or lead to accidents and health violations in any restaurant, but they aren't always the worst offenders. In fact, the biggest culprits for most food safety violations may be more mundane, and you can do something about them with a minimal investment.

Food Safety Culprit No. 1: Cutting Boards

The cutting board, whether made of wood, plastic, or rubber, is only as safe as its surface. Ideally, this surface is a sanitary place to rest food during chopping or slicing and protects knife edges from chips and dulling. In some circumstances, though, this benign kitchen tool is improperly maintained, silently spreading infection from dish to dish.

Although wooden cutting boards can absorb living microorganisms, they're also naturally antibacterial. When used and maintained properly, wood boards can eliminate microbes within a few minutes.¹ Additionally, wood can be sanded smooth to remove gouges and scars that accumulate over time, eliminating scratches and chips where food residue can hide. Because it's softer than plastic, wood provides a firm cutting surface that doesn't chip or dull knife blades easily, making it a preferred choice for chefs working with high-end kitchen knives.

Wood requires specific maintenance, including hand washing and regular oiling to preserve its antibacterial properties and prevent cracking. If you buy wood boards for your kitchen, it's important to educate staff how to clean and use them to ensure they don't become bacteria's favorite place in your commercial kitchen.

Acrylic and polyethylene boards provide a smooth, nonporous surface that doesn't absorb bacteria and can be washed and sanitized easily. The plastic used for these boards is harder than wood, so it may blunt the edges of knives and make for a rough cutting surface. Scarred plastic boards can be tricky to sanitize because knives can microscopically fracture on incision and it's difficult for brushes or cleansers to permeate deep scratches on the board. Plastic can't be sanded smooth again, so these boards must be removed once they become too grimy for regular service.

Plastic cutting boards usually are significantly cheaper than wood or rubber styles; they don't need special cleaning or care to maintain, so many operators choose to keep plastic boards on hand for general staff use and simply replace them when their surfaces are damaged. Unlike wood, plastic boards are available in color-coded styles, making it easy to keep meat, chicken, fish, vegetable, and allergen-free boards separated in a bustling, fully staffed kitchen. Plastic also can go through the dishwasher, so it's quick and easy to clean and reuse the same board several times daily.

For these reasons, many operators choose to stock a mix of cutting boards to serve different purposes. No matter which you choose, the most important thing is to ensure the boards are cleaned and maintained properly to prevent cross contamination. Don't forget to resurface or discard cutting boards as they become scratched or splintered.

Food Safety Culprit No. 2: Ice Scoops

The industry – and your local health inspector – does consider ice a food, and it needs the same care and attention normally given to flashier ingredients in a commercial kitchen. To this end, the sanitation of the ice scoop and the threat of cross contamination are essential considerations, as the ice scoop frequently makes direct contact with ice.

Ice bins can get dirty, often with biofilm (aka slime) notoriously produced when machines intake airborne yeast and bacteria in restaurant kitchens. When someone contracts an illness from ice, they rarely suspect it, much less report it. It's hard to determine the source of foodborne illness when you're not even aware of it, so the ice scoop often goes unnoticed.

So what's the best way to thwart this food safety culprit? Keep the ice scoop – and your hands – high, dry, and outside the bin. Opt for a scoop with a knuckle guard to shield the ice from sticky fingers. Clean it frequently, install a holder, and wash hands before scooping.

Food Safety Culprit No. 3: Thermometers

A thermometer can go unused for periods of time that would surprise many operators, though perhaps a frontline worker wouldn't bat an eyelash. They're often disregarded, sometimes on shelves collecting dust, and especially when located inside walk-ins where they may go without thorough cleaning for years at a time.

The Centers for Disease Control interviewed 486 restaurant workers in nine states and concluded: "Many food workers said they engaged in risky food preparation practices." Furthermore, "younger, less-experienced workers more often reported risky food prep practices." Just over half of the workers surveyed reported using a thermometer to check the temperature of cooked food was high enough to kill any germs.²

This seems intuitive. What else are thermometers for? There's just one problem.

To be used safely, a thermometer must be calibrated. This isn't aeronautical science, but it's also not the kind of chore a risk-happy youth is going to take the initiative on, either. Health inspection data shows restaurant after restaurant is out of compliance because they simply don't bother owning thermometers or placing them somewhere they can stay clean, accessible, and functional.

Finally, they forget to train staff how to use and, more importantly, calibrate the thermometers they have. Relying on a thermometer that hasn't been used in years is almost as risky as not using one at all.

Food Safety Culprit No. 4: Oven Gloves

It's a common scenario: A new worker juggles a few hundred stock pots and fryer baskets and starts thinking he's made of Teflon, too. They can't find the right tool for the job, so they decide to grab an oven glove to lever those hotel pans full of boiling queso out of the steam table. Then the fabric thumb gets dipped in Sterno. Days later, panko breading. More queso, Sterno, panko, who knows what, now he's a toxic thumb grenade, dabbing toxins everywhere like Typhoid Larry and ready to go up in flames next trip to the salamander.

So how can a restaurateur avoid this exact kind of scenario or others of its ilk? The answer lies in the construction of the glove.

Scallops and neoprene are diving's greatest gifts to the restaurant world. Having a neoprene oven mitt or two can prove to be an inestimable boon to any restaurant, especially one that employs staff that handle ovens routinely. Unlike cloth styles, neoprene is nonabsorbent and doesn't have to be laundered in a washing machine to get it clean.

Food Safety Culprit No. 5: Facial Hair

Handlebar mustaches and magnificent beards might be aesthetic your staff want to sport, but those face follicles may come with a unique set of challenges to a healthy restaurant environment.

As beards and facial hair in general rise to popularity, restaurant management and customers alike seemed so charmed they didn't give hygiene a second thought. "Statement beards" have spread beyond major metropolitan areas and no longer are strictly a fashion phenomenon. According to a Simmons National Consumer study, 17 percent of all men and 35 percent of men of 18 to 24 years of age have facial hair, up from 14 percent and 31 percent, respectively, in 2009. The volume of health code violations citing beards has picked up accordingly, although it's still estimated to be less than one percent of all reported violations in the United States.³

In 2019, Swiss scientists conducted a study to determine if it's safe to scan a dog in the same MRI machine used for humans. To determine microbial load, they swabbed the beards of 18 men and 30 dogs' necks – and found "a significantly higher bacterial load in specimens taken from men's beards compared with dogs' fur."⁴ Other experts, however, conducted their own research and concluded differently: As long as a beard is regularly washed and groomed, it's no more unsanitary than the average clean-shaven chin. Unfortunately, they also conducted a poll of 1,000 male readers and discovered that 41 percent of beard-growers do not regularly wash or clean their beards, so it's a coin toss if that beard is innocently minding its own business or just waiting for the opportunity to drop some bacteria-laced hair into your next meal.⁵

After the nation collectively gagged reading these and other findings of what-all non-beard matter some beards might contain, those violations may spike again. Even if they don't, the public will be thinking, sharing, and arguing about the potential danger of dirty beards in restaurants, and perception goes a long way when it comes to dining out.⁶

Foodservice operators should consider a beard cover, net, or guard for any facial hair growth long enough to be shoulder-length if it were head hair, because it can get tangled up in a hand blender or it may drop hairs in the kitchen if it's not well-groomed.

Requiring one by default, however, could be a dealbreaker for that talented young culinarian you're thinking of hiring.

References

1. Cutting Boards of Plastic and Wood Contaminated Experimentally with Bacteria. Journal of Food Protection, Vol. 57 (January 1994). Accessed December 2021.
2. Food Safety Practices of Restaurant Workers. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Accessed December 2021.
3. Scruff is in as men shave less. Experian Marketing Services. Accessed December 2021.
4. Would it be safe to have a dog in the MRI scanner before your own examination? A multicenter study to establish hygiene facts related to dogs and men. National Library of Medicine; Center for Biotechnology Information. Accessed December 2021.
5. How Dirty Is Your Beard? The Surprising Answer. University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Accessed December 2021.
6. Restaurant Mental Health Code Violations. The New Yorker. Accessed December 2021.