Researches in the domain of Food Contamination show that over 80% of the contamination of regular daily food is attributed to the poor Personal Hygiene levels of the Kitchen Staff and the Food handlers. In such a scenario, majority of the microbial contaminants enter the Food Chain through the Food Handling Staff.
Prime reasons behind such problems are as follows:
1) Lack of knowledge of Importance of Personal Hygiene in Food Safety.
2) Ignorance and Negligence of the Food Manufacturers and their staff.
3) Improper and Irregular Hand Washing and Hand Sanitization Practices.
4) Lack of knowledge of the appropriate procedures of Hand Washing and Hand Sanitization.
5) Improper kitchen layout, leading to touching unhygienic parts of the kitchen during Food Processing.
6) Low levels of Personal Hygiene Monitoring, Certification and Documentation.
7) Contamination through Food Handlers who are carrying diseases and micro organisms.
Regular monitoring of Personal Hygiene of the Food Handlers with Hand Hygiene Swabs is required to verify effective hand washing techniques and thus reduce the risk of cross contamination in the kitchen.
As a general measure of containing Cross Contamination of Food by the hands of the Food Handlers, in many Food Manufacturing Units the Food Handlers are made to wear gloves. Gloves spread the contamination the same way the hands do. In this case, it is important to take swabs from the gloves to verify that the staff are not working with contaminated gloves and are changing frequently or whenever contaminated.
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