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	From Harvest to Our Dinner Table
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Excerpt

Chapter Two

Food Hygiene and Protection

Persons known to be, or are carrying a disease as an illness that can be transmitted through food, are not to be allowed to enter food handling facilities if there is a likely chance for them to contaminate foods. If they are already on the production premise and have been identified to be so affected, they should report the illness or symptoms of their illness to management.

All food handlers should maintain the highest degree of personal cleanliness. Any cuts and wounds, where food handlers are permitted to continue to work, must be covered by suitable waterproof dressings.

Food workers and personnel should wash their hands when individual personal cleanliness may adversely affect food safety in the following areas of operation: (a) at the beginning of a days work in food production; (b) after one handles raw foods, mainly meats and poultry and other contaminated food materials that could result in the contamination of other food items, particularly ready to serve foods; (c) after use of the toilet and touching soiled equipments. Anyone to be engaged in food handling should refrain from sneezing or coughing over an unprotected food, spitting, smoking, eating and chewing. Mind you too that personal effects like jewelry, watches, pins may not be worn in production and service areas or even in other food handling facilities at any place in the food chain, if these materials can pose a threat to the safety and suitability of food in process. All visitors to any food manufacturing , processing and handling confinement, should wear protective clothing and adhere to all personal hygiene provisions.

The general worker's conditions that should be reported to facility management so that a medical examination to determine possible exclusion can be determined may include the following: fever, diarrhea, sore throat with fever, jaundice, boils and cuts, or any discharge from ear, eyes and nose.

An earnest desire is to establish some personal hygiene practices in the food chain for food protection. Again the food chain is from primary production to final product for the consumer. A goal here is to advocate some of the necessary hygienic conditions for producing food, which is safe and suitable for consumption. Our main objectives here are as follows:
A. to clearly make certain that whose who come into contact with food are not likely to contaminate it.
B. that they maintain a reasonable degree of personal cleanliness.
C. that we all continue to act and behave properly during food handling processes.

Writer intends to remind all of us that people in general who do not care about consumer health and do not maintain a good degree of personal hygiene and cleanliness, who do not behave accordingly, who have certain illnesses can contaminate food and transmit illness to other consumers unknowingly to themselves.

We can say then that the general principles of food hygiene and protection are interpreted to do the following for all of us: (1) to help us identify all the essential guidelines on food hygiene that would be applicable though out the food chain, to achieve our goal to make sure that foods that we eat are safe and suitable for human consumption. (2) to recommend to the industry a HACCP based approach in food production, processing, distribution sale and preparation to enhance safety. (3) to provide for us all of the methods for our uses in the implementation of the food hygiene principles. (4) to work with government agencies for guidance with specific regulations which we need at each facility or sector in the chain to amplify the hygiene requirements that are specific to the areas.