Microbiological safety assurance applied to smaller catering operations world-wide. From angst through ardour to assistance and achievement - the facts

Providing small food and catering operators, constituting a segment of the small and medium size enterprises (SME), with adequate guidance to ensure microbiologically safe products at the moment of ingestion constitutes a difficult endeavour. It culminates in street vending of foods, particularly in areas with poor sanitary environmental conditions and high ambiental temperatures. The natural occurrence of pathogens on raw materials of animal, and more recently also vegetable origin, is often compounded by an unreliable water supply, poor temperature control and lack of even a rudimentary knowledge of applied food microbiology. The mission statement of the Coder Alimentarius Commission nonetheless includes providing the entire sector of food and catering enterprises world-wide with Codes to enable the plentiful supply of unconditionally safe food. A construct has been devised to gradually but substantially enhance the microbiological safety of products offered by SMEs - in essence complying with the HACCP maxim. Lord Plumb's extension of Bauman's HACCP model to longitudinally integrated safety assurance (LISA) has been chosen as the lead policy. 'Wilson's Triad, ensuring control of contamination and proliferation throughout the entire food chain provides the essential guidelines. An innovation consists of introducing the concept of attention points, where critical practices or sites cannot yet be brought under control. In this way the mental preparedness to pursue further improvements as required is perennially stimulated. Practical experience is presented of using the 'Ten Commandments of Safe Catering' as a tool to focus attention and ensure activity. It was found to be substantially reinforced by introducing autonomous monitoring ('own checks') including temperature profile assessment and simple hygiene testing. The latter testing could rely on the use of commercially available Agar Immersion Plating & Contact (AIPC or 'dip') slides which constitute a safe tool and one which, owing to its visualization power, strengthens the drive to do better. Cautious use only should be made of the legal SMEs' obligation, as promulgated in the US and the EU, to comply with HACCP based strategies. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.