Food safety and sanitation from the impact of technology innovation

Healthcare innovation causes the rise in concern of food safety and sanitation across the globe that the food tech would be leveraged to control food safety.

The paradox that notwithstanding the constant revolution, the word is going hungry these days due to overpopulation and climate changes, which cause the food reduction of the farming industry. Suffering the fierce attack from COVID19 and business instability, the world hit adverse effects from the supply chain disruption. In 2019, roundly 135 million people were living alongside the food crisis. That number in 2020 is predicted to be significantly higher since the worse consequences of COVID19 remain persistent in the feature.

In fact, food safety and sanitation seemingly catch the attention of both the public and private sectors. From farms to processing, food businesses are enduring with series of safety risks, which could dominate the volume and quality of food products. Some typical risk factors could be related to proper food handling and sanitation, contaminated equipment, or personal hygiene. Unfortunately, a large number of farmers are under improper facilities in doing their work.

Additionally, food production and restaurants are also facing critics with food health and safety that people suspect sanitation through food processing. Evidently, several scandals were found with food producers. They are blamed for poisoning the community from toxic substances being harmful to health in their products. According to the Guardian, the rate of America getting infected by unsafe food had been alerted, reaching about 15% annually.

In these cases, massive technology innovations were born, which expectedly secure safety and sanitation. Accordingly, innovative restaurant technology gradually became the norm, which is changing the way of operation. In this article, we provide information regarding the role of technology, especially software development, that affects the control of food safety and sanitation in food production and restaurants.

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Food safety and sanitation overview

Obviously, Food safety refers to an intrinsic part of human rights, which decides the sustainable development of nations. In fact, over 400,000 people die annually due to food contamination. Even in developed and rich countries with a high level of respecting food safety and sanitation, people are recently suffering from eating food poisoned with bacteria, parasites, toxins, and chemicals.

Additionally, food safety and sanitation practices in the restaurant are catching attention, especially when COVID19 are threatening the food industry due to the doubt of injection. In the UK, all the restaurants are marked based on their safety and sanitation standards. Whereby, the public sector is expected to raise the public awareness of food hygiene and sanitation among restaurant owners and food handlers. Accordingly, community well-being would be improved by preventing unsafe foods.

Highlight pillars for safety and sanitation  

1. Food inventory: Currently depend on location, restaurants and other food production businesses are required to follow at least one food reservation standard, especially for cold storage and dry goods. In fact, each kind of food needs a unique inventory condition to maintain food quality and sanitation.
2. Temperature and environment control: Experts believe that any minor false in reservation temperature could lead to the raising of bacteria, which poison the food. Accordingly, machines and automated systems are leverage to control the environment for protecting the food.
3. Food handling and preparation: during delivery and handling, food is facing with series of risks of contaminations, which cause damages to the whole shipments. Keeping sanitation through food handling is not only protecting food hygiene but also limit food waste.
4. Staff hygiene: in fact, the fundamental requirement for every restaurant kitchen is self-hygiene among staff. For proper food handling and sanitation, hand washing and regulation on clothing are strictly required to deter cross-contamination.
5. Cleaning rules: and finally, a proffer and clear rules of protecting food safety and sanitation could keep staff on tracks. In which, it reminds every notice regarding keeping the food health and safety in each place. Constand reminders could lead to fewer mistakes in the implementation of food safety

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Kitchen safety and sanitation  

Controlling the sanitation in the kitchen remains the priority to every restaurant, which also challenge the regulation sectors. In other words, restaurant owners have to carefully manage the kitchen safety and sanitation rules to adapt to the standard imposed by authorities. With improper kitchen safety, they have to shut down their business.

In many restaurants, the kitchen management system is applied to control the operation across the kitchen and ensure smooth cooperation between staff. Along with the revolution of big data, IoT, and software development company, this system becomes more sophisticate.

• Starting with food preparation: the inventory management system commonly offers tools for managing recipes, which contributes to maintaining the consistency of food quality and taste. Besides, it allows staff to controls the safety and sanitation of recipes in a central dashboard, covering the stock amount and level of consumed in dish preparation. The dashboard also stores the details of recipe origin
• Equipment and warehouse maintenance: parts of the restaurant management system would give information on storage and stock supply status. In which, safety and sanitation of cooking equipment and raw materials are under the control of sensors and tracking methodology. It monitors the shelf life and food hygiene based on a central panel.
• Managing food safety and sanitation via forecasting: today, innovative technology allows owners to know the estimated kitchen consumes in a given period of time. The estimations are based on historical reports. Also, data would tell the evidence in control the loopholed of food safety in the supply chain that users would replace the poor-quality material from the stock on time

Related article: Technology in the food industry – the impact of digital transformation

Food safety and sanitation practices in restaurant and production

Safety and sanitation technology have jumped a big step recently due to the born of regulatory challenges. Since businesses have to adopt the complex sanitation program operated from community standards and regulations, food and beverage control system are believed to keep restaurants and food factories staying well-operated with proper food handling and sanitation requirements.

Automated digital reporting

Report keeping is responsible for chemical control and management in the majority of food processing these days. Accordingly, food businesses are leveraging chemical tracking tools to keep food safety under control. Besides, the real-time reporting keep the chemical usage under the responsibility to meet the sanitation standard. Therefore, the final products are strictly under quality control for timely detecting any unexpected sign that occurred across the process.

Additionally, digital reporting generated data into a central dashboard to visualize the food hygiene and sanitation situation. Throughout the numbers and graphs, users comprehensively understand the compliance level of safety and sanitation standards in every minor step across the factory. Hence, users can handily track and fix any potential matters.

Inventory management for keeping food safety and sanitation

The factory and restaurant inventory management system recently applied to control business warehouses or food store chains, which are trouble with the massive volume of food supply and consume each day. In fact, inventory food is suffering a higher risk of contamination than others due to the challenges of inventory management. For warehouse chains, it rarely has a highly accurate in manual-control the inventory condition accurately.

Obviously, poor inventory management leads to poor food safety practices, which would send the company to possible criminal expenses for execution. A robust inventory management system is indispensable to control the level of food hygiene in the warehouse. In which, businesses could have the pieces of evidence to prove the obligation under the food sanitation law in need.

Rapid micro testing  

In reducing possible contamination in food processing, food experts are leveraging rapid micro testing to control food safety. By testing the diversity of bacteria groups, results of micro testing tell the significant elements that cause insanity food. In turn, the most challenges of taking the rapid test related to advance requirements of equipment and level of warranted cleaning in the lab.

Automated chemical dispensing  

Food safety intervention technologies are currently protecting the food from over chemical dispense. The proper food handling and sanitation contributed to the accurate recipes. Also, it monitors the accuracy of chemical usages that eliminates waste and costs for businesses. Additionally, the system could manage the food handling and mixing process to deter unexpected incidents.