Restaurant Date-Marking Practices Concerning Ready-to-Eat Food Requiring Time and Temperature Control for Safety.

Certain foods are more vulnerable to foodborne pathogen growth and formation of toxins than others. Lack of time and temperature control for these foods can result in the growth of pathogens, such as Listeria monocytogenes, and lead to foodborne outbreaks. The Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Food Code classifies these foods as time/temperature control for safety (TCS) foods and details safe cooking, holding, and storing temperatures for these foods. The FDA Food Code also includes a date-marking provision for ready-to-eat TCS foods that are held for >24 h. The provision states that these foods should not be held in refrigeration for >7 days and should be marked with the date or day by which the food should be "consumed on the premises, sold, or discarded." To learn more about restaurants' date-marking practices, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Environmental Health Specialists Network (EHS-Net) conducted observations and manager interviews in 359 restaurants in 8 EHS-Net jurisdictions. Managers reported that they date marked ready-to-eat TCS foods more often than data collectors observed this practice (91% vs. 77%). Observation data showed almost a quarter of study restaurants did not date-mark ready-to-eat TCS foods. In addition, restaurants with an internal date-marking policy date marked 1.25 times more often than restaurants without such a policy and chain restaurants date marked 5.02 times more often than independently owned restaurants. These findings suggest that regulators and the retail food industry may improve food safety and lower the burden of foodborne illness in the United States if they target interventions to independent restaurants and encourage strong date-marking policies.

School Dietitians' Perceptions of Potentially Hazardous Food and Inspection of Food Safety and Sanitation

The purpose of this study was to identify school dieticians' perceptions on the Potentially Hazardous Food (PHF) and the inspection of food safety and sanitation conducted by Provincial Office of Education. Questionnaires were distributed to 400 school dieticians in elementary schools in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, and 217 responses were collected. The majority of respondents (64%) defined PHF as food that easily decays at room temperature and over half of the respondents considered Korean cooked vegetables as a PHF. In addition, 4% of respondents completely excluded PHFs from their menus. Forty five percent of the respondents selected CCP rule 7 (delivery and distribution process) and 34% selected CCP rule 6 as the most difficult of the CCP rules to follow. Also, perceptions concerning food safety inspection and sanitation were not high in terms of validity, objectivity, and reliability among the evaluation criteria. The study results suggest that PHF as well as Potentially Hazardous Menu (PHM) definitions and guidelines should be re-established in consideration of traditional Korean food culture and the preparation of Korean foods.