Guide to Food Hygiene

I recently became aware of a recent London EHO visit to a conference centre group. They operate a mature and well designed full HACCP Plan. They were told that it was entirely unsafe to cook whole cuts of fish (fillets) to temperatures below 75C. To amend their core tempertaure monitoring limit to 75C would mean that the fish could only be well done – or more likely – destroyed! Since any contamination of such fish would be surface contamination only and since bacteria begin to die above about 60C (the same is true of food borne viruses) this comment was unjustified in my opinion. Indeed the Food Standards Agency’s Safer Food Better Buisness Pack supports, in one of its safe methods, the cooking of whole cuts of meat and fish (not processed or minced meat) to rare or medium levels. Come on local authorities! Lets get our EHO’s properly trained with regard to the thermal destruction of bacteria and food borne viruses!