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This information can be used to develop food safety and quality programs that meet the requirements of modern Regulatory, Customer and Industry Standards:
When considering the development, documentation, and implementation of Premises Amenities Standards within food safety and quality management systems, the following information should be considered to ensure effective outcomes:
All food businesses require adequate amenities and facilities for staff to enable appropriate personal hygiene through the following:
Personnel hygiene facilities should be available to ensure that an appropriate degree of personal hygiene can be maintained and to avoid contaminating food. Where appropriate, facilities should include:
Hand washing is essential in preventing the contamination of foodstuffs by pathogenic micro-organisms. Therefore, sufficient, convenient, and adequate handwashing facilities must be provided within any food business where food handling, processing, or packaging occurs. The number of handwashing facilities can be determined through consideration of the following:
Handwashing facilities should be used for handwashing purposes only. The use of the handwashing facilities for storage purposes, dump sinks, utensils and equipment washing, food preparation, or any other purpose makes the facility inconvenient for handwashing purposes and therefore can contribute to public health risk.
Restricting easy access to handwashing facilities by placing equipment, containers, or other items in front of the hand washing facility, even temporarily, constitutes risk based on the in-availability for access. Handwashing facilities should be adequate for hand washing. Adequacy often relates to the following design requirements:
It is generally accepted that toilet facilities are situated within a reasonable walking distance from food-related activities and should not directly open into food production, handling, or storage areas within a food business. Toilet facilities should:
Eating and drinking areas within food businesses must be clearly defined and segregated from food processing, packaging, and storage areas. The construction of such areas must be suitable for its intended use and should include basic amenities such as water supply, cleaning, and sanitation facilities, and food storage devices.
Eating and drinking areas should be considered as part of the food business, and therefore should be cleaned, sanitized, pest controlled, well-lit, and maintained appropriately at all times. Waste disposal services must also be provided to eating and drinking areas within the food business.
Areas for smoking and other activities must be located away from areas in which food handling occurs. Smoking areas should be serviced with waste disposal devices and should be scheduled for cleaning and sanitation on an ongoing basis. It is important to ensure that appropriately constructed and serviced hand washing facilities are provided for people using smoking areas, before entering back into the food business premises.
Adequate appropriately constructed and maintained storage facilities should be provided for all staff and visitors to a food business. These must also be located within appropriate areas to ensure contamination of foods does not occur.
For the storage of personal items, storage facilities such as lockers must be located away from operational areas within the food business. Defined requirements for the storage and handling of personal items must be documented and communicated to staff and visitors to ensure ongoing compliance.
Storage facilities must also be provided within operational areas to ensure that items required within operational areas do not contaminate food products.
The conditions under which food is handled from the point of production until final consumption determine the quality and safety of the food we eat. The basic rules for the hygienic handling, storage, processing, distribution, and final preparation of all food, along the food production chain, are set out in the Codex Alimentarius General Principles of Food Hygiene. They include requirements for the design and facilities, control of operations including temperature, raw materials, water supply, documentation and recall procedures, maintenance and sanitation, personal hygiene, and training of personnel.
Hygienic practices form an integral part of all food safety management systems, including the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point or HACCP system. The General Principles are recommended for adoption by governments, industry including primary producers, manufacturers, processors, foodservice operators, and retailers and consumers. The general principles of Food Hygiene cover all aspects of circumstances that are necessary to ensure the safety and suitability of food at all stages of its handling, processing, storage, and distribution.
The aims of food hygiene are to:
Food hygiene is achieved through effective systems which:
If your food business supplies foodstuffs manufactured to a customer’s specifications, it is important to consider any specific Premises Amenities Standards Development requirements in relation to their items.
Document: A document provides guidance and/or direction for performing work, making decisions, or rendering judgments that affect the safety or quality of the products or services that customers receive.
Documented policies, procedures, work instructions, and schedules form the basis of any food safety and quality management system. The following documentation formats may be considered to ensure ongoing compliance with specified requirements for Premises Amenities Standards:
If your food business supplies foodstuffs manufactured to a customer’s specifications, it is important to consider any specific Premises Amenities Standards Documentation requirements in relation to their items.
You may wish to visit the Premises Amenities Standards Templates section of haccp.com for examples of Premises Amenities Standards documentation, record, and resource formats commonly applied within food safety and quality systems.
Implementation: Implementation is the application of documented food safety and quality system elements into the actual business operation.
The implementation of Premises Amenities Standards within any food business requires genuine commitment from senior management, staff, and visitors to ensure the nominated goals of implementation are achievable on an ongoing basis. It is a step that requires significant planning and consideration of general and specific food business circumstances to ensure the outcomes of Premises Amenities Standards do not negatively impact the safety and quality of the food items dispatched from the business.
Implementation of Premises Amenities Standards must include a clear definition of responsibilities and authorities for all levels of participation by senior management, staff, and visitors to the site.
When implementing Premises Amenities Standards within the food safety and quality system, you may wish to consider the following requirements before completion:
If your food business supplies foodstuffs manufactured to a customer’s specifications, it is important to consider any specific Premises Amenities Standards Implementation requirements in relation to their items.
Monitoring: Monitoring is the act of reviewing and confirming measurable parameters of a defined process or product status.
Monitoring requirements within food industry sectors are generally identified against limits of acceptability defined within HACCP plans, implementation procedures, and work instructions. Monitoring usually includes some element of record-keeping, which may be maintained manually or through digital systems. It is important to consider that advancements in technology have spawned many systems and processes which are self-monitored and or self-adjusted when variances are identified. Regardless of the system used; The goal of any monitoring activity is to provide sufficient evidence that any limit of acceptability has been met.
Traditional Premises Amenities Standards monitoring requirements include manual recording and the application of corrective actions when the results of monitoring are found to be outside acceptable limits. Corrective Actions should also generally be strongly linked to the monitoring process where applied to ensure full traceability of the applied actions.
Common monitoring activities and record formats may apply to Premises Amenities Standards:
If your food business supplies foodstuffs manufactured to a customer’s specifications, it is important to consider any specific Premises Amenities Standards Monitoring requirements in relation to their items.
You may wish to visit the Premises Amenities Standards Templates section of haccp.com for examples of Premises Amenities Standards documentation, record, and resource formats commonly applied within food safety and quality systems.
Corrective Action: Corrective action is mandatory action to be taken when a deviation to the Quality System occurs, particularly to a Critical Control Point.
Preventative Action: At any step in the process where a hazard has been identified, preventative action must be put into place to prevent re-occurrence.
Corrective Action and Preventative Action are implemented to ensure that any identified non-conformance issues are documented, investigated, and rectified within appropriate time frames. Corrective action is any action applied to regain control over a product, process, policy, or procedure that has been identified as being non-conforming outside nominated limits of acceptability. Preventative action is any action applied to prevent any identified non-conformance from reoccurring.
The outcomes of corrective and preventative actions should result in regained process control after effective application. Specified corrective actions are commonly linked to the HACCP Plans and the food business certification process.
Below are Corrective Action and Preventative Action examples which may be associated with Premises Amenities Standards related non-conformance:
If your food business supplies foodstuffs manufactured to a customer’s specifications, it is important to consider any specific Premises Amenities Standards Corrective Action requirements in relation to their items.
You may wish to visit the Corrective Action and Preventative Action section of haccp.com for examples of best practice applications for this food safety and quality system element.
Verification: The act of reviewing, inspecting, testing, checking, auditing, or otherwise establishing and documenting whether items, processes, services, or documents conform to specified requirements.
Verification is the detailed review of all food safety and quality system elements to confirm that they are effectively developed, documented, implemented, monitored, and reviewed. All food safety and quality system elements, including documented policies, procedures, training, HACCP plans, and their operational applications must be verified on an ongoing scheduled basis. The verification process commonly includes a defined schedule for which verification activities are required, how often they are conducted, who is responsible, and detailed documented procedures for each nominated verification activity.
The general goal of an established verification process is to ensure any systemic non-conformance issues are identified and rectified within an appropriate time frame. When non-conformance issues are identified through the verification process, Corrective Actions and Preventative Actions should be implemented to ensure they do not impact the effectiveness of the food safety and quality system.
The following examples of verification activities may apply to Premises Amenities Standards:
If your food business supplies foodstuffs manufactured to a customer’s specifications, it is important to consider any specific Premises Amenities Standards Verification requirements in relation to their items.
You may wish to visit the Verification Activities section of haccp.com for examples of best practice applications for this food safety and quality system element.
Validation: The process of gathering evidence to provide a scientific basis for the documented act of demonstrating that a procedure, process, and activity will consistently lead to the expected results. It often includes the qualification of systems and equipment.
Validation is the provision of evidence to support the limits of control or acceptability for food safety or quality parameters nominated within systemic elements. Limits of control or acceptability are commonly included within documented food safety and quality systems elements such as procedures, HACCP plans, and specifications.
Common sources of validation include regulatory and legislative standards, finished product specifications and customer requirements, industry codes of practice and guidelines, verified and validated research, historical product, and process control outcomes, and analytical testing.
The general goal of an established validation process is to ensure any systemic non-conformance issues are identified and rectified within an appropriate time frame. When non-conformance issues are identified through the verification process, Corrective Actions and Preventative Actions should be implemented to ensure they do not impact the effectiveness of the food safety and quality system. Validation activities are commonly defined within the verification schedules and procedures of established food safety and quality management systems.
The following examples may apply to validation of the limits of control or acceptability for Premises Amenities Standards:
You may wish to visit the Validation Activities section of haccp.com for examples of best practice applications for this food safety and quality system element.
Skills and Knowledge: Skills and knowledge are attributes of human interactions commonly linked to competency within any specified job-related task.
Training and competency requirements for Premises Amenities Standards must be ongoing, including regularly scheduled reviews to ensure the effectiveness of training and competency outcomes.
Team members who have defined responsibilities regarding Premises Amenities Standards should have knowledge including:
Team members who have defined responsibilities regarding Premises Amenities Standards should have skills including:
Team members who have defined responsibilities regarding Premises Amenities Standards should have access to resources including:
If your food business supplies foodstuffs manufactured to a customer’s specifications, it is important to consider any specific Premises Amenities Standards Training, Competency, and Resources requirements in relation to their items.
You may wish to visit the Training, Competency, and Resources section of haccp.com for examples of best practice applications for this food safety and quality system element.
haccp.com was created to support food businesses and food industry professionals in achieving and maintaining the stringent requirements of food industry compliance.