Cleaning and sanitizing are necessary steps in ensuring food is safe for consumers. If equipment, utensils, and dishes aren’t cleaned or sanitized correctly, pathogens can spread to everything they touch. Protect both your customers and your job by learning how to properly clean and sanitize. Why clean and sanitize? Pathogens can be found on almost […]
Hepatitis A Outbreaks in California
What is Hepatitis A? Hepatitis A is a dangerous foodborne illness. It’s one of six foodborne illnesses managers are required to report to their local regulatory authority because it’s highly contagious. It also has a history of outbreaks in California. One of the worst outbreaks of Hepatitis A in occurred in San Diego. In 2017, […]
Top Foodborne Illness Outbreaks in California in 2018
The Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigated nine foodborne illness outbreaks in 2018 that affected residents of California. Eight of the outbreaks were linked to E coli or salmonella bacteria in contaminated food. Of the 224 people in California who got sick due to the bacteria, several had to […]
Ask a Food Safety Scientist: How Do You Test for Hazards in Food?
Recently, our food safety scientists received the following question: What is the best guidance to assess microbial testing on varying food products to ensure food safety and quality? Each year, 600 million people around the world are sickened by contaminated food. To combat foodborne illness, the FDA sets standards for the food supply in the […]
Stand-Up Training: Date Marking and FIFO
Empower Employees Through Training Help reinforce good food safety practices in your establishment through stand-up meetings. Use this training outline as a guide for your next meeting. Date marking foods and using the FIFO (First In, First Out) method of food storage help you use food when it’s at its freshest and reduce overall food […]
Tutorial: How to Run a Corporate Certificate Report
When you partner with StateFoodSafety, you gain access to our free online reporting tool to help you manage your employees’ training! Reports allow you to access information about employee training instantly, from anywhere. The Corporate Certificate Report is a targeted report to help you see which employees will need to renew their certificates soon. It […]
Stand-Up Training: Cooling Food Safely
Empower Employees Through Training Help reinforce good food safety practices in your establishment through stand-up meetings. Use this training outline as a guide for your next meeting. Cooling food safely prevents dangerous bacterial growth in food. Learning Objectives You may choose to read these learning objectives with your employees as a part of the stand-up […]
February Cartoon: 3 Food Safety Tips That Could Save Your Business
In 2017, a foodborne illness outbreak in California sent 10 people to the hospital with botulism poisoning. Botulism is a potentially deadly foodborne illness caused by toxins from clostridium botulinum, a bacteria that thrives in environments with low oxygen. The outbreak was traced back to a nacho cheese dispenser in a gas station. It resulted […]
ASL Food Handler Course Helps Deaf and Hard of Hearing People Get Their Food Handler Card
Typically, if you are deaf or hard of hearing and want to get your food handlers card online, you have one option: turning on the subtitles. But for StateFoodSafety, subtitles weren’t good enough. In 2012, we decided we could do more to make working in the foodservice industry easier for people in the deaf community. […]
Ask a Food Safety Scientist: What is Clostridium botulinum?
Have you heard of this intimidating bacteria? Most people have heard of the disease it can cause—botulism. Clostridium botulinum is an anaerobic bacteria, meaning that it thrives best in an oxygen-deprived environment. In addition to this, the bacteria can produce spores, which can survive until the conditions are ideal for bacterial growth. The bacteria produce […]