Food safety is gaining in importance worldwide for not only is it absolutely critical for human health and well-being, the loss of inventory due to spoilage can erode the bottom line of any food business substantially.
Food safety has come under scrutiny in the UAE following cases of food poisoning across various F&B outlets, but to be fair to the authorities, food safety has always been a serious concern with them.
Dubai Municipality has made Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) certification mandatory for all four and five star hotels and food manufacturing premises. Executive chefs carry the responsibility of assisting the management in getting the hotel HACCP certified and overseeing that their kitchens and restaurants function according to HACCP guidelines and principles.
It was the same for Geoff Haviland, when he joined the Southern Sun group of hotels as Corporate Executive and Development Chef, in charge of Al Manzil and
Qamardeen hotels in Downtown Dubai. Under his stewardship, both the hotels were able to obtain the HACCP certification in a matter of six months.
Haviland attributes this feat to an efficient HACCP team and to the TempTrak Wireless Temperature Recording System installations in both the hotels. The system takes temperature and humidity readings of hot and cold holding equipment like chillers, freezers, etc, that are critical to food safety, every five minutes, round-the-clock.
How TempTrak works
“Temperature monitoring systems like TempTrak can serve as an integral part of applying for HACCP,” said Haviland, adding that the system helps to better control temperature-time abuse, which is one of the most important food safety element to be safeguarded.
“If the temperature of prepared food is not maintained at the optimum temperature, i.e. hot and cold-holding is not properly maintained, you run the risk of pathogen multiplication in your food,” says Haviland.
He was already familiar with the efficacy of the TempTrak system having been instrumental in installing it to monitor 22 different F&B outlets in the Festival City complex, prior to coming to Southern Sun.
The way the system works is simple. Door contact sensors can indicate when the door of any cold-storage unit has been left open by mistake, prompting an immediate corrective action. The continuous temperature
monitoring shows trends in the efficiency of the working of cold storage areas, and any changes outside the parameters are spotted easily, leading to corrective action and minimal downtime of equipment.
Alarm notifications such as SMS, email or a simple flashing light in red, shows that a threshold breach has taken place against the temperature parameters set for the equipment, be it freezer, refrigerator or any other cold-holding storage unit.
Automated data collection reduces manual temperature measurement requirements and as Haviland says, “leaves no scope for data tampering.” All TempTrak reports can be printed out from the PC or network server and used as and when required, making it very convenient for food inspectors to get a first-hand account of the way food is being stored during their inspection regimes.
While Haviland as corporate chef has access to the data transmitted by each and every remote sensor, the outlet chefs have access to data pertaining to their respective kitchens only. “Whenever a breach is detected, the system automatically sends an email to the engineer on duty who checks the equipment and takes corrective action,” says Haviland. He recounts an incident at a previous workplace where a generator breakdown connected to the main freezer would have caused a great deal of peril to the AED 190,000 worth of seafood stored in bulk, had it not been for the TempTrak system, which detected the breach, enabling Haviland to take the corrective action of getting the generator up and running again.
Within a freezer environment, food should be maintained at temperatures ranging from (-18 to -21˚C) degrees. It is still considered safe for the temperature to reach 0˚C, but clearly unsafe if the temperature rises above 0˚C, to reach 5˚C and beyond. In such a situation, the corrective action would be to discard all food items.
“Any food which is in the danger zone, i.e. outside the preset temperature parameters for a time limit of one hour and a half to two hours should be written off as wastage,” asserts Haviland.
It is for this very reason that the TempTrak system is not connected to the main power supply but to an independent power supply, so it can notify any temperature aberrations in the equipment connected to the main power supply.
Mirco Beutler, general manager of Mobile Gastro Konzepte LLC, the company supplying the TempTrak Wireless Monitoring Systems in the region, informs that the wireless network can work flawlessly to cover an area up to 300 metres, and with the installation of a booster, even beyond.
Food safety is not impossible to attain if procedures that rule out cross contamination and time-temperature abuse are implemented followed by proper personal hygiene by all food handlers, says Haviland.
A proper hand sanitising regime is maintained across the kitchens in both the hotels with alcohol-based sanitizing sprays, gels and disinfectants available at each workstation.
“Personal hygiene is something which is inculcated in the kitchen staff with proper training, which creates an awareness of what can go wrong if hand hygiene is not maintained. For instance, they understand how potentially harmful bacteria like Staphylococcus can get transmitted onto food with improper handling. This works out better than the ‘stick approach’ and the ‘drop everything and wash your hands’ routine, which creates nothing but robots,” says Haviland.
Having a documented record of the temperature of all control point areas comes very handy in safeguarding the hotel in cases of food poisoning allegations. “We maintain a record of the supply audits and all the control points right from the time the food comes into operation, through storage, preparation and final serving, in fact all the parameters that guarantee the safety of food.
“People who experience problems are invariably travelers who have consumed food prior to coming to our hotel One of the most common food poisoning bacteria, Salmonella, can take up to 72 hours before the onset of symptoms, but the immediate perception of guests is that the food they just consumed was the one that caused the food poisoning symptoms.”
The hotel takes a random sampling of food prepared everyday and stores it for a period of a month. Water sampling is carried out on a daily basis to test for the presence of Legionella. Haviland is open to random, spot checks from Municipality food inspectors who take samplings of food, surface swabs, hand swabs, etc., for “it is better to identify weak areas and take corrective action rather than compromise food safety.”
For instance, TempTrak sensors are fitted wherever high-risk items are being stored, i.e. in refrigerators, freezers, chillers, blast chillers, walk-in coolers, etc. Both Al Manzil and Qamardeen have 90 temperature detecting sensors installed in high-risk food storage units. Sensors are not installed in areas such as the fruits and vegetable storage unit in the receiving area for it is not a control point chamber. “Food safety is not compromised if tomatoes and pineapples are a bit warm,” jokes Haviland.
Stringent cleaning regimes
However, fruits and vegetables are sanitized in the receiving area where they are dosed with the environment-friendly, food-grade Oxytech sanitiser prior to being stored, which is capable of killing all bacteria including mycotoxins. Sanitizing vegetables is very important to kill coliform bacteria like E.coli which can be present due to the faecal contamination of water.
Dishwashers are checked by service provider Diversey to see if water in the rinse cycle is being maintained at optimum temperature that sanitizes and renders crockery and cutlery safe for use.
All the thermometers used to check the temperature are calibrated once a month according to TempTrak specifications to maintain uniformity and optimum readings.
A very stringent cleaning regime is also implemented in both the hotels wherein all storage units are thoroughly cleaned once a week. Stringent cleaning regimes of cold-storage units are very important to kill psychrotrophic bacteria that are capable of surviving in very cold environments as well.
The precision of the TempTrak Temperature
Monitoring System can be gauged by a quick look at the alerts it generates. By closely examining an alert, which registered a rise in temperature of a fish chiller of up to 3.9 C at 11 pm (a fall out of spec according to the parameters set for the chiller), Haviland was able to analyse and corroborate that at that point of time, the fish chiller was undergoing a cleaning regime after switching it off, hence the rise in temperature.
“Though I am familiar with the cleaning routine, I can verify the alert further by checking against the cleaning log which is manually maintained so there are no loose ends and missing links. It’s a perfect example of technology supporting us to maintain food safety, with the beauty of HACCP added to help, where everything is documented.”
Alerts signify ‘too cold’ or ‘too hot’ and a notification to the maintenance department takes care of adjusting the temperature settings of the equipment in question, which becomes the corrective action.
Haviland is able to tick off other alerts which fall under an ‘operational pattern,’ such as, a spike in temperature in the fruit and vegetable chiller at 8.45 am, would indicate that the chiller door is being opened many times in order to prepare food for breakfast. Any anomaly in the regular pattern is to be taken serious note of.
“It is important to note that the thermometer measures the temperature of the inside environment, i.e. the temperature of food which is being stored, and not the outside environment,” states Beutler.
The kitchens at Al Manzil and Qamardeen are equipped with blast chillers that are capable of cooling wet dishes rapidly (from 100˚C to 5˚C in 45 mi
nutes) to be transferred to the main chiller upon cooling. The process of blast chilling eliminates bacterial spore formation for spores of pathogens such as Clostridia botulinum and perfringens are capable of surviving and multiplying in the freezer as well.
A talk with Chef Suhaib Oman, in-charge of high-risk food preparations like beef, meat, poultry etc, highlighted the critical control points of prepared food.
Temperature readings of prepared food kept in 
the hot
cabinet are taken from the middle of the food item after sanitizing the thermometer, at regular intervals of 45 minute to one hour. If the temperature goes below 65˚C (tolerance level is 65.5˚C), the food is to be reheated till above 76˚C and re-served. It is the same for cold food, to see that the temperature does not go beyond the critical control point parameters.
Hence, as Haviland states, food safety is all about preventing bacterial contamination, multiplication and their ultimate destruction. This can be achieved by using procedures that prevent cross-contamination in food preparation areas, tools such as temperature monitoring systems that help prevent temperature-time abuse and stop bacteria from proliferating, followed by the destruction of bacteria using disinfectants and sanitizers and stringent cleaning regimes.
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