A proposed Food Safety Management Framework for Catering Services

摘要

Safe food is essential for life and food safety has become a watchword in most catering organizations. Despite the widely accepted gains emerging from adopting food safety management system models worldwide, food catering sectors seem not to have made benefit towards deploying such systems in improving their food safety and hygiene practices. The problem lies in the nature and complicated requirements and norms of the current frameworks and associated roadmaps towards effective implementation of food safety management initiatives. The present paper proposes a food safety management framework for food services and catering sector based on integrating several internationally recognized food safety and food quality management systems; the international standard ISO 22000:2005 requirements for any organization in the food chain, Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP), Codex Alimentarius Commission, together with the quality management system ISO 9000:2008 series. It is expected that the proposed framework overcomes limitations inherent in other food safety management concepts and approaches. The proposed framework is distinguished by its agility among constituents, and can be used to self-assess organization's food safety management initiatives and efforts to assess their progress over time. The proposed framework is appropriate, feasible for implementation, and was tested in an educational organization; it provides information and guidance for caterers, to help them provide healthier and safer food for their customers.