READING

Ex 3.16  Read the extract from a book. Check the meaning of the highlighted words in the glossary (Appendix 2) if necessary.

HYGIENE 

Of all the miracle cures and preventive wonders medical science has wrought, none can match hygiene. Clean food and water are of vital importance to human health, and humanity is freed from a terrible burden of disease wherever good sanitation and adequate hygiene prevail. Yet the uncomfortable fact remains that, even in the developed countries of the world, we live surrounded by contamination, much of it fecal contamination. "We're basically bathed in feces as a society" writes New York University microbiologist and immunologist Philip Tierno, Ph.D. in his 2001 book, The Secret Life of Germs: Observations and Lessons from a Microbe Hunter. Of course, no one thinks that eating feces is a good idea. But all too often, despite knowing better, we fail to pay enough attention to hygiene, both our own and our kitchen's. Most of the roughly 80% of foodborne illness that is caused by fecal contamination of food could be eliminated with proper hygiene. Good hygiene is critical wherever food is prepared or eaten. In a restaurant setting, maintaining excellent hygiene minimizes the risk of contaminating your customers' food, making them ill, and going out of business. For a home cook, the stakes are just as high. Tierno notes that an estimated 50%-80% of all foodborne illness is contracted in the home. Food safety hygiene isn't just the concern of professionals.

Why might otherwise conscientious cooks overlook simple hygiene measures? Perhaps these measures seem too simple to be of great importance. Hand washing, for example, is the single best defense against foodborne illness, yet it's often among the first tasks to be jettisoned in a busy kitchen. Most people know that dirty hands can lead to disease; they just don't appreciate the magnitude of the risk. And cooks tend to forget how much food is actually handled in a kitchen especially in the kitchen of a high-end restaurant, where fancy meals and elaborate presentations demand that food be extensively manipulated. We don't mean to suggest that food hygiene is easy just because it's simple. Implementing proper hygiene procedures requires unfailing discipline and keen attention to detail. It's impossible to eliminate all germs on the food you prepare. But you can greatly improve the safety of food by focusing on a few critical aspects of personal hygiene, kitchen hygiene, and temperature control.

The fact cannot be overstated: consistently maintaining good hand hygiene throughout the day is one of the most important things a chef can do to reduce the risk of foodborne illness. In a kitchen, fecal contamination is almost always abetted by dirty hands. Yet hand washing presents a disproportionate challenge. It's not that cooks don't understand the necessity of hand washing. Most just don't realize how thorough they must be to do it right. People almost always miss their thumbs when they wash their hands, for instance, and they rarely wash long enough to achieve the desired effect. Tierno recommends washing your hands for as long as it takes to sing the song "Happy Birthday" twice through (about 30 seconds). Washing your hands well most of the time won't do. Nor will washing your hands almost every time you go to the bathroom or start a new preparation step. You must wash your hands properly every single time they might be contaminated, even if that means dozens of times a day. If that adds a burdensome amount of time to your daily schedule, then so be it. Proper hand washing is not optional. Surgeons accept that scrubbing up is part of their job. Chefs should do the same. Proper hand washing includes scrubbing your fingernails with the kind of plastic nailbrushes that surgeons use. The brushes are deceptively soft but ruthless to germs and great at removing dirt in otherwise hard-to-reach spots. Indeed, you can tell if a restaurant is serious about hygiene by whether its workers use fingernail brushes when washing their hands. Many places don't use brushes, because the staff washes up in the same bathrooms as the patrons and the proprietors don't want to leave the brushes lying around. But that's no excuse. Store the brushes under the sink; alternatively, chefs can carry them in their pockets. The single most important time to wash your hands is after using the bathroom. It seems ludicrous to have to spell that out, and yet disease statistics indicate that in most cases the food isn't intrinsically contaminated; rather, it becomes contaminated with the feces of the people who handle it. Even if you're feeling perfectly fine, wash your hands very carefully after going to the bathroom. If you're not feeling well, you should probably not cook for other people. Next in importance is to wash your hands after every preparation step that could lead to cross contamination.

The lettuce from the farmer's market could have contaminated dirt or animal feces clinging to it; so could the leeks. Whole eggs or whole chickens could be covered with bacteria. Wash your hands after you handle one food and before you handle the next. You must also make sure proper hygiene extends to everything else in the kitchen that touches the food: utensils, cutting boards, counters, and other kitchen tools and surfaces. One myth in food safety is that meat and seafood are inherently more risky than plant foods. Remember that fecal contamination is the main culprit in food borne illness and that produce is just as likely to carry it as meat and seafood are. Fecal contaminants can wind up on strawberries, spinach, or peanuts just as easily as on meat; indeed, each of those vegetables has in recent years caused a major outbreak of one of the dangerous strains of E. coli. And contaminated plant foods such as berries, green vegetables, and nuts carry an additional risk, because they are much more likely to be consumed raw than are meat and seafood. Proper hygiene is just as important when you are handling plant foods as it is when you are preparing meat and seafood, despite perceptions to the contrary. Gloves can aid proper hand hygiene, but to use them effectively you need to recognize their limitations as well as their advantages. The main advantage of gloves is very simple: people generally take them off before they go to the bathroom. That alone can make them worthwhile. Gloves also keep food out of contact with bacteria in pores or fissures in the skin, under the fingernails, and in other areas that are hard to clean even with proper hand washing. But gloves aren't a panacea. Wearing gloves over filthy hands does very little good, because pathogens on your hands can easily contaminate them when you're putting them on or taking them off. You need to maintain proper hand hygiene even when you're wearing gloves. You also need to change your gloves after every trip to the bathroom and every task that involves food products that could host contaminants. Yes, that means the number and expense of gloves can really add up, but no restaurant should be stingy in handing them out. Issuing one or two pairs per cook for an entire day is ineffective and creates a situation that is ripe for hygiene problems. Dirty gloves will quickly cross-contaminate other kitchen surfaces, just as dirty hands would.

Be aware also of the surfaces most likely to be contaminated, such as doorknobs-particularly the knob or handle of the restroom door. It's a good bet someone who used the restroom before you didn't wash up perfectly, or at all, and that knob or handle is the first place that person's dirty hands landed. Thus, the best hand washing job can be undone if you grab the doorknob next; use a paper towel to open the door, and discard it immediately after. The same goes for water faucet handles: people usually touch them before they wash their hands, so they're often filthy with microbes. That's one reason automatic faucets were invented. Faucets with foot or knee pedals accomplish the same end. Automatic soap dispensers are also a good idea. Crowded kitchens with few sinks might also benefit from alcohol sanitizers installed at every workstation. This practice is becoming increasingly common, but again, it's important to understand its limitations. Alcohol, for example, isn't always effective against viruses, such as the highly infectious norovirus, one of the leading causes of outbreaks of food borne illness.