Food hygiene standards in the Australian food service industry are generally not satisfactory, according to a University of Queensland Gatton College study.
Small operators, particularly in the catering/function and ethnic restaurant sectors, exposed customers to greatest risk from food poisoning or poor food hygiene, the study found.
Paul Morrison, a senior lecturer in hospitality management in the Hospitality, Tourism and Property Management Department, said a lack of barriers to entry by completely untrained people had made a 'mess' of food safety practices.
'We found that 40 percent of establishments we surveyed were putting customers at risk through unsatisfactory food hygiene management,' Mr Morrison said.
'However, ?at risk' is a matter of degree - some people such as the elderly and children are more at risk than others.'
About 80 percent of all food poisoning cases were caused by food prepared outside the home, he said. The popularity of dining out and eating takeaway meant about 30 percent of all meals were prepared outside the home.
Mr Morrison and co-researchers lecturer Nola Caffin and microbiologist Bob Wallace, both of the Food Science and Technology Department, have just completed a three-year study of food hygiene. Australian Meat Technology was the industry partner.
Their hygiene audit of a cross-section of 19 food service outlets in south-east Queensland found the hygiene levels and practices of nine outlets were 'unsatisfactory'. All nine were small food service establishments.
This year the researchers ran focus group interviews with food service operators including representatives from the wholesale meat and hospitality industries, and environmental health officers.
'Food service operators agreed that the pressure to maintain and improve profits compromised the investment in food safety management plans,' Mr Morrison said.
'Operators also agreed that staff training was a prerequisite to better food safety.
'There was also a complete absence of knowledge regarding HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) and the proposed national food hygiene standard.'
HACCP is a quality assurance system based on enterprise specific data developed by NASA in the 1970s, and used by the food service industry in the European Union.
The Federal Government has proposed the HACCP system for the Australian food service industry.
Mr Morrison said he doubted the industry in which certain sectors were largely unskilled and unprofessional, was ready or willing to introduce the proposed system.
'There's a need to demonstrate to industry that quality assurance programs can be cost-effective because most operators believe that they're too expensive to implement and monitor.'
He proposed to trial the HACCP system to measure its cost-effectiveness before the Federal Government introduced the system.
The study found that operators also considered the inspection of food service premises by environmental health officers as very important in improving food safety.
'Frequent inspections would force borderline operators to comply or get out of the industry,' Mr Morrison said.
He said focus groups reported that the broad responsibilities of environmental health officers compromised their effectiveness on food safety issues in the food service sector.
'Some councils put a low premium on improved food safety relative to other local authority responsibilities,' Mr Morrison said.
The Queensland food service industry currently follows a prescriptive model, with environmental health officers checking hygiene standards.
The research team's recommendations for improving food hygiene include:
- designing food safety management system workbooks in a range of languages to accommodate the ethnic restaurant sector;
- developing a series of technical briefs/fact sheets on food safety for food service operators; and
- modifying/redesigning equipment to reduce the onus on human intervention. This could include data loggers to record temperatures of stored foods; design changes to the shape and composition of food storage containers to facilitate quick chilling; continuous cookers to ensure adequate core temperature heating; cookers which cannot be operated until appropriate temperatures are reached; and colour coding cutting boards and other high risk equipment, to minimise risks of cross-contamination.
For more information, contact Mr Morrison (telephone 07 5460 1388).
.jpg)
