REHIS Elementary Food Hygiene in Edinburgh

I went on a 1 day REHIS Elementary Food Hygiene course.  It’s the most recognised qualification for food hygiene certificate but it’s surprisingly hard to find a provider.  You can probably do it online but I was more interested in a in-person course.  Not for any special reason but I make soup and run barbeques and, like first aid, it seems like generally useful knowledge to have.  Edinburgh College didn’t know when they would run them, other Lothian councils ran seemed to run out of spaces immediately, eventually a place came up on a course by Edinburgh charity the Cyrenians who have a warehouse by Leith Walk where they take in excess food from supermarkets and do good things with it as well as run cooking courses and these REHIS courses.  It lasts a short work day and finishes with a simple multiple choice exam.  The course was well run with friendly competent staff and I’d recommend it to others.  Here’s some notes for my own use and anyone else who cares.

Four types of hygiene hazards in food are: chemical, microbiological, physical and allergens.

Store cleaning and other chemicals away from food, not high where they can fall, don’t decant into other containers.

Critical temperatures are: -18C for a freezer, 1-4C for a fridge, danger zone is 5-63C (especially rapid at body temperature), cook food to at least 75C (or 72C for at least 2 mins), reheat food to at least 82C.  When checking temperature stir liquids and check at widest point.

Main causes of problems are:

  • prepared too far in advance
  • cooling too slowly (use a wide container to cool, no longer than 90 mins, don’t cool infront of window)
  • unreliable food sources
  • undercooking
  • not thawing poultry
  • cross contamination
  • raw food, check e.g. beansprouts are ‘ready to eat’ and don’t cross contaminate
  • storing hot food below 63C
  • food handlers being unhygenic

Bacteria are classed 2 ways. Food spoilage e.g. mould, visible and tasteable, cause toxins and food poisoning, quite quick symptoms. Microbacterial and pathogens cause disease cause food borne illness and can take a couple of days to show.

Bacteria can double in number every 10 minutes, 1 hour = 8 bacteria, 3 hours = 4000.

Bacteria slow growth when cold but some can still grow at fridge temperatures e.g. lysteria.

Don’t reheat rice because bacillus cereus spores can germinate and make toxins, if you must do this at home then put in fridge quickly and wash first. If making a cold rice salad then cool quickly and store in fridge.

Some bacteria can multiply when in unfavourable conditions by producing spores which then grow into bacteria when favourable conditions return.

High risk foods are ones which are ready to eat without cooking, e.g. cold meat products, dairy products, eggs, shellfish, rice.  Eggs can be bought pasturised in milk-carton which can be easier and safer than using fresh.  Pasturisation means holding at a below-cooking temperature for a long time to reduce bacteria.

Cross contamination occurs from raw food to ready to eat food.

Buffet food must be held above 63C.

Raw foods e.g. vegetables should be washed in running water.

Utensils in a cold buffet should be left out of food to prevent contamination.

Wash hands before cooking, after touching hair and face, after touching bins, after going to toilet.  Wash by lathering soap, washing between fingers, thumbs, nails, wrists, dry with tissue, turn off tap with tissue.

Don’t wear nail polish and watch for other objects that can pollute such as name badges.

Everyone is now responsible in law not just employers.  You must note and report problems.

After sickness wait 48 hours after symptoms stop.

Don’t wash dishes in hand wash basin to prevent cross contamination.

Only 10% of food poisonings are reported (because many aren’t too serious, it’s unclear to me what you should do with non-serious cases).

Common problem bacteria for toxins:

  • Salmonella – from e.g. poultry
  • C Perfinges – from meat and soil
  • Staphylococcus aures – from body fluids
  • C botulium – from cans (and beauty injections)
  • Bacillus cereus (pronounced basillus sereus) – from rice

Common causes of food bourn illnesses:

  • campylobacter
  • e-coli 0157 – from guts of ruminants
  • listeria – fermented food, cheeses
  • typhoid – water bourn
  • norovirus – everywhere. causes vomiting and diarrhea, can survive for 12 days on stainless steel, little warning before symptoms, wait 48 hours after symptoms stop before handling food, pressure clean room to fix

Notable allergens listed by FSS:

  • nuts
  • peanuts
  • milk
  • eggs
  • gluten from wheat and barley
  • celery
  • sulfur dioxide (used in wine and dried fruit)
  • shellfish
  • soya
  • mustard
  • fish
  • lupin (fancy flower)
  • molluscs
  • sesame

Food preparation surfaces must be cleanable, well lit and all kit movable. Kitchen layout should separate dirty and uncooked food from ready-to-eat food.  This can be done by space or time e.g. prepare raw meat earlier in day or take out rubbish after close. Colour code your mops and cleaning cloths.  Antibacterial cleaners reduce bacteria, bacteriacide kills bacteria.  Detergent removed grease. Sanitiser is detergent + antibacterial.  You must know the necessary contact time for antibacterial and bactericide cleaners.

A 2 sink wash can be done using bactericide + rinse or washing liquid wash + 82C hot water.  Or just use dishwasher.  Air drying is the best way to dry although not always possible.

HACCP – hazard analysis critical control points.  A risk assessment for food.  All food operators must implement and keep current.  Identify hazards, find control points, set limits, monitor uses, decide on corrective action.

Legislation is from Food Safety Act 1990, then following regulations.

Environmental health and food safety officers can enter premises and any reasonable time to check up on you.

 

Plasma Sprint: Legacy Media Support in KDE Applications

Boudhayan Gupta dropped by for the final day of the Plasma Sprint because he had 3D printed that save icon and wanted to test it.  Coincidently I found a treasure in the glove compartment of my dad’s car, a Eurythmics Greatest Hits audio CD.

So how does KDE applications do for legacy media? Mixed results.

Dolphin works even if it does report it as a 0B media [Update: fixed by the awesome Kai Uwe]

However classic KDE tool KFloppy less so, it hard codes locations in /dev to find the floppy but my USB floppy drive just appears at /dev/sdc, even one I fixed that it uses an external tool which breaks fdformat.

Meanwhile CDs are also something we ship apps for but never test.  This makes the Plasma Sprinters sad because they desperately want to hear Love Is a Stranger.

kio-audio CD didn’t work but then when we looked at it again it worked perfectly, don’t you hate when that happens?  This was a killer feature of KDE back when everyone was ripping CDs to their hard disk for the first time.

Playing Audio CDs natively less successful, Amarok shows it as a source but says it has 0 tracks.  Dragon plays it fine but Dragon has no concept of a playlist so you can’t select a track.  kscd works but is a perfect example of why skins and client side window decorations are a bad idea because it still looks like it did years ago.

We also tried k3b which works for making a new audio CD but doesn’t let you add files to a data project (bug 375016) so shouldn’t be released quite yet. [Update: also fixed by Kai Uwe, what a useful chap.]

Where else does KDE support legacy formats that need checking up on?

 

Plasma Sprint: KDE neon Docker Images Now Support Wayland

The KDE neon Docker Images are the easiest and fastest way to test out KDE software from a different branch than your host system.

Coming live from the Plasma Sprint sponsored by Affenfels here in Stuttgart, the KDE neon Docker images now support Wayland.  This runs on both X and Wayland host systems.  Instructions on the wiki page.

Below you can see my host system running Plasma 5.9 on X is running Plasma master with Wayland.

Hugs to David E.

neon-docker-wayland

KDE at FOSDEM and Plasma Sprint 2017 Pics

We’ve had a busy weekend at FOSDEM in Brussels for the last two days and now I’ve travelled into my fifth country of the trip picking up a few hackers on the way for the KDE Plasma Sprint which is happening all this week in Stuttgart, do drop by if you’re in town.

DSC_0001KDE and Gnome looking good at the Friday beer event

DSC_0004Busy busy on the KDE stall

DSC_0010Food and drinks at the KDE Slimbook release party.

DSC_0008KDE neon goes smart

DSC_0013After a road trip into the forest of baden württemberg we arrived at the KDE Plasma Sprint sponsored by von Affenfels

DSC_0017Plasma Sprint also sponsored by openSUSE

DSC_0015Plasma Sprint also sponsored by Meat Water

DSC_0016Plasma Sprint also sponsored by Kai Uwe’s mum