Improving restaurant safety

March 23, 2005
The Ottawa Citizen
F4

Paul Medeiros of Guelph writes regarding, Restaurant cooks need major upgrade in training, March 15 to say that training is an integral part of any program to improve food safety in restaurants, but he has grown frustrated by what appears to be a single-minded focus on training as the only way (or even the best way) to reach that goal.

As the former manager of a national food-service company's quality-assurance department, Medeiros lost count of the number of times a food supplier would respond to quality or safety complaints by stating they would solve the problem through retraining. People who rely on training to solve problems and prevent recurrences are missing the fact that the root cause of their problem is probably not a lack of training.

For example, think about the reasons why restaurant employees fail to wash their hands. They may include: hand sink is located too far away; its access is blocked; no soap or paper towels are present; employees are worked off their feet and can't even breathe, much less wash hands; or management does not promote hand washing on an on-going basis.

Bottom line: Achieving food safety does require the training of managers and employees, but it also requires an effective inspection program, the use of a proper food-safety system, and management that is motivated and able to look beyond the simple superficial solutions to find the solutions that truly produce long-lasting improvements.