Food Matters

If you are unsure whether you would like to use the SFBB toolkit or your own written management system, here are some benefits of adopting SFBB:

• It is a national scheme and many food businesses will be using it
• It will help your business to comply with the new regulations
• It will show what you do to make food safely
• It will help to train your staff
• It will protect your businesses reputation
• It will make your business more efficient and reduce waste

The toolkit is split into five sections;

Cross-contamination	Cleaning	Chilling	Cooking	Management

The first four sections are based on the Food Standards Agency's 4 Cs food hygiene campaign. These areas are the important things to remember to ensure good food hygiene in your business. The fifth section, Management, is about making sure that good food hygiene practices are in place and there are written procedures to show that this is the case.

Each of these sections contains a number of fact sheets called 'Safe Methods'. For example, safe methods would include instructions on how to avoid cross-contamination between raw and cooked food, how to clean properly, how to chill down hot food and cooking food safely.

You will need to work through the pack and decide which of the safe methods apply to your business. You can either adopt them as they are if the method matches exactly what you do, or alter them if necessary to reflect your businesses' food handling practices. You must then make sure that you follow these safe methods. If there isn't a safe method for something that you do in your own business then you can write your own based on the format in the pack. In practice, most caterers will need to complete every safe method in the pack.

At the back of the pack is a diary. This is used to record simple daily opening and closing checks, any problems that have happened during that day and the action that was taken to put the problem right. There is also a 4-weekly review, which prompts you to review your safe methods to check they are up to date and still being followed. It will also allow you to see if there is a pattern of things going wrong in your business that needs to be looked at.

The principle on which the regulation is based is known as HACCP, which stands for Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point. This system has been around for a number of years and was originally designed to make sure that food prepared for astronauts was safe to eat! It has, therefore, been tried and tested and shown to improve the safety of food that is produced using such a system. HACCP and similar systems are currently used by many food businesses across the world, particularly manufacturers, hotel and pub chains and other catering businesses.

The diary also provides space where you can make notes; keep a list of your suppliers, employees, training undertaken and your cleaning schedule. The record keeping is designed so that it only takes a very small amount of your time to complete. The aim is that you record when something has gone wrong and what you have done to put it right.

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Based on the pilot study, it will take about one hour to initially complete each of the above sections i.e. cross-contamination, cleaning etc. (so five hours in total to get started) and around one minute per day to complete the daily forms. Every month you will need to carry out a review of the system to check that it is working accurately and this will take approximately two minutes of your time. This is a small time commitment considering you will be producing a working food safety management system that will help you to ensure that the food you are selling is safe to eat.

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Following on from the Catering SFBB toolkit, the Food Standards Agency launched a toolkit especially designed for retail food businesses. The safe methods in the toolkit are adapted to the types of food handling that retailers generally do, for example storage and display of food, limited food preparation e.g. sandwiches, bake off and reheating of products.

Versions of the toolkit have also been designed for catering businesses serving Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan cuisine and also Chinese cuisine. The Chinese toolkit is available in both the Chinese and English language.

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If you have decided that you would like to use the toolkit in your business, you should obtain a copy by calling Tel: 0845 606 0667 or by emailing: foodstandards@ecgroup.co.uk. You can also download a copy of the toolkit by visiting the Food Standards Agency website. If you are unable to obtain a pack by any of these methods, the Food Safety Team do keep a small number of packs.

Once you have the pack, you will need to decide how to implement it into your business and whom you may ask to help you. As the owner or Manager you will need to take the lead and be responsible for the system but you may want to delegate certain tasks to employees e.g. temperature monitoring.

If you do have employees, you must make sure that they are aware of the new regulations and the requirement to document your food safety management system. The training and consultancy page provides further information on how you can do this.

If you require assistance in putting the pack into practice, there are companies that provide training and consultancy services. Environmental Health Officers in the Food Safety Team will also be able to answer any questions that you may have.

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