Get a Basic Food Hygiene Certificate to Protect You and Your Consumers

• The Level 2 Award or Food Hygiene Certificate in Food Safety in Catering as called by the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health is a training course mandatory for all food handlers in the UK on a recommended three year cycle basis.

Nowadays foods are taken away to be processed, packaged, washed, labelled, frozen, chilled, sterilised, irradiated, pasteurised the list of handling practices and places of production around the world is almost endless.

When studying for a Basic Food Hygiene Certificate, you will learn how the dangers of contamination by toxins released from dangerous bacteria rise significantly with time and so, the longer our foods have been in circulation the higher the threat to the ultimate consumer.

In the majority of cases your claims will be true but how many times have you found a badly sealed film pack, a blown carton, a dented can, or simply a fleck of mould on the cheese, a scuff of dirt on the meat?

These signs are visible to the eye, but pathogenic bacteria are colourless and odourless to the naked eye and nose. This is why, Basic Food Hygiene Certificate is essential so that handlers are taught the correct methods to adopt when working with foods.

Early detection, eradicating cross contamination and holding foods out of the "Danger Zone" are a few of the basic skills necessary in the food cycle to ensure safe food production. As a food handler, you have a duty of care to your customers and if your foods become injurious to health then it is you that will be held liable.

Your employer will also be scrutinized, why wasn't your training and knowledge up to the required standards?

Of course, it is the poor consumer of your foods that has been struck down by stomach cramps, diarrhea and vomiting or maybe worse. It is they that lost money at work or failed to attend that all important interview.

So, food hygiene training will not only protect your employer from prosecution for your substandard actions, but it will also protect you, the food handler, by providing the knowledge to handle your foods properly thus releasing you from the costly shadow of fines or even prison sentences of 6 months for comparatively minor offences.

Who is a food handler?

If you offer foods to anyone in a "Non Family" environment, then you are a food handler by definition under the laws of the UK.

Chefs, cooks, waiters, waitresses, vending operators, cakes shop counter staff, farm shop counter workers and many more. You are also included if you are giving foods for free, working for charity or serving foods at a none family children's party.

Food Industry Training provide CIEH accredited and certified online eLearning training courses ranging from Food Hygiene manufacturing safety.