Personal and Kitchen Hygiene Practices
What this domain covers
Personal hygiene and kitchen controls - handwashing, illness reporting, protective clothing and temperature management - are tested here as practical, observable behaviours.
Personal hygiene
- Wash hands for at least 20 seconds with soap and warm running water: on entry, after the toilet, after raw meat, after waste, after coughing or sneezing, and after breaks.
- Hands are the main cross-contamination route; gloves are not a substitute for handwashing and must be changed between tasks.
- Short clean nails, no polish or false nails, hair covered, no jewellery on hands or wrists, clean protective clothing, and no eating, drinking or smoking in production areas.
- Report vomiting, diarrhoea, fever, jaundice, skin infections or infected wounds. Exclude food handlers until at least 48 hours after diarrhoea and vomiting stop.
Kitchen controls
- Chillers 1–5 °C, freezers −18 °C or colder; check and record temperatures daily.
- Cook to a core temperature of 75 °C (or 70 °C for 2 minutes); reheat to 75 °C once only.
- Separate preparation areas, or separate in time, for raw and cooked food; use colour-coded boards.
- Clean as you go; two-stage cleaning (clean, then sanitise) for food-contact surfaces; change cloths frequently.
- Waste in lidded bins removed often; pest-proof doors, windows and drains.
Worked example
A cook develops diarrhoea during a shift. Reasoning: a food handler with diarrhoea can shed Salmonella or norovirus onto food for the whole shift. The cook must stop handling food immediately, report to the supervisor, be excluded from the kitchen, and return only 48 hours after symptoms resolve, with the incident recorded.
Traps
- Using hand sanitiser on visibly dirty hands.
- Wearing the same apron from the raw meat area to the salad bar.
- Tasting food repeatedly with the same spoon.
- Leaving food in the danger zone “just for a minute” across a whole service.