Food Safety Advice for Small Food Businesses
Recent Blog Posts from Food Safety Mid Atlantic
Recent Blog Posts from Food Safety Mid Atlantic
On my business website, we have been writing about food safety concerns for small businesses. If you have or are thinking about having a food business, you will find these helpful The last three posts were:
Growing Your Business
Grow Your Business with Food Safety
Growing your business requires intention, planning, and a big dose of food safety. A high-quality food safety program ensures you can produce a consistent product at the scale you need to sell in more stores to a bigger audience.
This post also includes a case study of the challenges of working with a co-manufacturer.
Writing Good Manufacturing Practices
Start with the FDA Good Manufacturing Practices to Build a Strong Food Safety Plan
The FDA’s Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) are a set of standards that regulate food safety. They serve as a model for creating a successful food safety plan. The GMPs are not comprehensive, but they identify key risks that may exist in your process and show how you and your team can control them.
In this post we discuss five of the GMP regulations, showing you how to use the language in the regulations to help you write your own GMP. For example:
“Equipment
This section explains the expectations around keeping equipment safe and sanitary. In particular, it covers controls for regulating temperatures and notifying employees if they fluctuate too much.
Example from the GMP regulations: Seams on food-contact surfaces shall be smoothly bonded or maintained to minimize accumulation of food particles, dirt, and organic matter and thus minimize the opportunity for growth of microorganisms.”
Preparing for a Food Safety Inspections
Don’t Be Scared of A Food Safety Inspection: How to Prepare and What to Do
As a food business, you likely get a regular food safety inspection by your state or county and by the FDA. We know these inspections can feel daunting. But, they don’t need to cause anxiety. With proper preparation, they’re an opportunity to improve your food safety practices.
We all share the goal of safe food and safe production. During a food safety inspection, you get to assess your food safety program and identify areas for improvement. With a mindset of collaboration, the inspection becomes a tool.
In this blog post, we discussed what an inspection is, how to prepare for future inspections, and what to do on the day of for best results.
One from the Archives
Food Safety Factor 2: Cooking/Processing at an Improper Temperature
In 2020 we wrote a series of posts based on the CDC Food Safety Risk Factors. This was the second post of five. In this post we discussed the risks of processing and cooking at too low a temperature. It is important to get food hot enough to kill off the pathogenic bacteria.
I hope you found this article interesting. Please ask any food safety questions in the comments.
Who Writes Food Crumbs?
Cathy Davies runs a food safety consultancy, Food Safety Mid Atlantic, supporting specialty food businesses with their food safety plans and programs. If you are interested in learning more about my consulting services, please schedule a free call.
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