[This article, as with all of Lacie's Letters was originally distributed in our Food Safety at Your Fingertipse-newsletter  Hence the references to visiting the FoodHandler site.. so if you 're reading this, you're already here!]

Useful resources are a good thing in the way of food safety—and if you will take a short cyber trip to the new and improved FoodHandler website, you will find a few more tools on there to take advantage of if you haven’t checked out our website lately.  The best part is there’s no great big dollar investment like for many other useful food service tools such as cooking devices and refrigerators.  Your only investment is a little time and I’ll just be your personal tour guide.     

Go to www.foodhandler.com.  Once you get through those delightful pictures (especially the child with food on the face), click on “food safety.”   Some of the most useful tools are in this section of the website and are in a file format that is easy to use.

 Click on Downloads -- From food safety signs you can post in your back of house, to storage and temperature charts that will always keep your employees in the know, these easy downloads are tools you can use.

•         Handwashing & Gloving signs in English and Spanish – four different messages.

•         Usable food temperature charts – there’s five different chart examples with an instruction page developed from our experience in food safety.  The charts are one of the most requested items on our website.

•         Glove sizing ruler.  Print it out and measure your palm for small through extra-large.

•         Handwashing steps in visual pictures – “Handwashing is the key” handout is good for training the method from the FDA Food Code.

•         Key Tips for Proper Glove Use handout explains all the basic rules of correct glove usage.

•         Refrigerator Storage Chart shows the vertical sequence of how to store your raw and ready-to-eat foods in a refrigerator from top to bottom, based on the final cooking temperature of that food.

•         Safe Food Temperature Chart is the best cheat sheet for learning all the important minimum temperatures for food safety and it’s based on the most recent version of the FDA Food Code.

•         Specific Food Tasks for Disposable Gloves explains how to use the right glove for the food handling task with some examples and briefly describes the glove material types.

 Click on Newsletters – This is where you find the literary masterpieces from Lacie and my counterpart in food safety (for 20 some years), Doris Rittenmeyer.   If you really want to beef up your food safety knowledge, you can research the archives for Doris’s “Food Code Tips” or “Letters from Lacie.”  If you are reading this, you probably already know the newsletters are free and come via monthly email.  Get your food service staff to sign up under the “Newsletters” tab so they have a fighting chance if you want to quiz them about our food safety information.

Click on Research – This area contains some information about a study of what consumers think of food handlers that wear gloves when preparing their food.

 Click on Videos – You have to go here for the great hand hygiene movies.  This section has excellent video segments on handwashing and glove use presented with short visuals (30-40 seconds) in 4 segments--Wash Your Hands / How to Glove / When to Glove / Why Glove. 

 Click on NSF Certification—In case you didn’t know, equipment, utensils, and products, such as disposable gloves that are NSF certified for food contact are what you should be using to handle foods.  Read the details about what the label certification mark from NSF International means, why it’s comprehensive, and the commitment manufacturers must make to get it.  It’s a good thing!

 Click on FAQ’s—Frequently asked questions contains detailed subjects related to gloves and food safety such as glove quality, food worker employee health,  hand hygiene,  proper glove selection, and foodborne viruses.

Click on Helpful Links—There are 12 links to food safety related websites, including the FDA Food Code and Handwashingforlife. 

 Go back to the top tabs and Click on Training – This brings you to the online “Basic Food Safety Training” program from FoodHandler.  Online training is one of the innovative ways to help employees learn the basic elements of food safety via the internet.  At $99 per location/year for up to 100 employees, this is an easy way to reinforce the food safety message.  It takes approximately one hour, and is divided into four segments, available in English or Spanish.  Another great feature is the manager can track all the employees that take the training, see how they did, and how long it took them to complete.  

Bottom Line:  Check out the new FoodHandler website at www.foodhandler.com.  We are proud of our efforts to make the website a virtual front door to our company.   Our Safety Management Services team will continue to add new food safety resources to our site so check back in occasionally. And of course, let’s also give some credit to our top notch Marketing Team.