Team Up for Food Safety Conejo Valley Unified School District

Production Style Central kitchen:  Receives ingredients  Prepares meals and salad bar items.  Individually packages as cold pack.  Transports to 15 elementary sites  Elementary (satellite) sites: Receive meals from central kitchen.  Re-therm at the site. Maintain cold chain for produce. Middle and High Schools: Order, prep, cook and serve- full service sites.  Farm-to-School program – includes sourcing local, seasonal crops, classroom nutrition education, garden-enhance learning.

How to Create a Food Safety Culture  Identify barriersProvide resources: Time, equipment, training  Consider the adult learner Make it relevant  Develop staff capacity Part of the routine- this is how “we” do it  Provide policies, procedures  and follow up Evaluation-incorporate into employee performance standards Monitor via site inspection, review and health department.

Food Safety begins with Menu Planning  Plan menu – what type of items? Equipment? Prep-style?  Articulate and Integrate HACCP Plan :  Procurement- How will I get the ingredients I need?  Create specifications- include food safety elements  Bids  Responsive and responsible bidder Receiving-  Check every delivery  Monitor temperatures, packaging etc.  Teachable moment: If every delivery driver knows you check- they will follow procedures! Create the expectation!

Central Kitchen- New Recipe 1200 Chili Verde Burritos

Central Kitchen Prepping –Mo’ Beans Please!

Staff Development  Engage Staff in the process- from new hire orientation, staff evaluations, and training. Don’t reinvent the wheel, but make it your own.  Resource: “Food Safety in Child Nutrition Programs”  Food safety in every tool: o Menu production Worksheets- include temperature monitoring – ensure food safety monitoring is aligned with the tools/records used daily. o Make them “user friendly” o Allocate time to check o Write it into the job description o Recipes – Include CCP’s

Food Safety and Farm to School  With more scratch cooking, raw ingredients and fresh produce there are additional things to consider.

Empowering staff to share their skills Use train-the – trainer model. Identify staff to share with co-workers.

Make it Fun! Myths and Facts Game  Myth: I can place salad bar items on the counter for a while before I place them in the salad bar.  Fact: leaving things out on the counter even for a short time puts the food at risk for bacteria growth increasing the risk for food borne illness.

Myths and Facts  Myth: Once the food has been cooked, ALL the bacteria is gone so I don’t need to worry about food safety.  Fact: The possibility of bacteria growth actually increases after a food item is cooked because of the drop in temperature. This is why it is important to hold hot foods at the correct temperature.

Myths and Facts  What have you heard?

Receiving  NEVER store items directly on the floor.  Put away deliveries promptly.  Kitchen doors need to remain closed, unless screens are present.

TOSS or SERVE

TOSS or SERVE?  You had a morning breakfast catered at 10am where the school staff requested the salad bar. After the breakfast, you realize no one put the carrots away and it is now 12:30pm and you want to serve those carrots for lunch. You touch some of the carrots and they seem cold. Do you toss them or serve them?

TOSS or SERVE?  It’s California Thursday and you receive fresh chicken at 39 degrees F early in the morning. The chicken was put away in the refrigerator that had a temperature of 40 degrees F. It is now time to cook it for lunch. Do you toss it or serve it?

TOSS or SERVE?  You receive your morning order of milks for the day. When you are putting the boxes away, the driver apologizes for being 2 hours late and tells you that he didn’t have enough ice chests to fit all of the milk in, but figured it would stay cold because he has done it before. You temp the milk and see that it is 50 degrees F. Do you toss them or serve them?

Introducing Salad Bar Etiquette to Kinders Connecting with the Classroom

Take Home Moment Food safety is everyone’s responsibility- Create and maintain a culture of food safety. Integrate food safety into every aspect in your organization.

Q and A?

CVUSD Contact Information  Website:  Facebook page: CVUSD/ Sandy Curwood, RDN, MS Director, Child Nutrition Services Conejo Unified School District