Food Safety & Environmental Health-Free-Samples for Students

Question: Implement and Monitor Environmentally Sustainable Work Practices. Answer: Hospitality is an important sector or industry since it requires good environmentally sustainable workplace practice. Since hospitality industry heavily considers environmental health, development of environmental sustainable policies is therefore important for any organization that has hospitality aspects such as kitchen or restaurant. There are some aspects of environmental sustainable regulation that regulate the hospitality industry especially kitchen operations. Some of the regulations are environmental health, energy usage and environmental safety. Firstly, environmental health regulations within the hospitality consider the healthy practices in the workplace and hygiene. Department of health regulate sanitation, water quality and waste disposal (Department of Health 2017). For instance, hospitality organization must be certified by department of health through environmental health council and issue license that permits operations. Secondly, department of energy provides energy efficiency usage regulations, appliances energy usage and environmental rating system. Benchmark includes usage of national environmental rating system to assess energy, water, waste and indoor environment. Thirdly, environmental safety is another aspect of environmental regulation that considers provision of services that are environme ntally safe to customers (Thomas, 2016). Some of the current workplace policies and procedures within the hospitality industry include health rating, efficient energy usage, and environmental hygiene and food storage policies. Firstly, the department of health in collaboration with hospitality association provides clear guideline and policies that ensure healthy hospitality operations. For instance, department of health outline the health rating procedure for workplace that rate to food usage, food safety and disposal of food remains or waste (Australian Institute of Food Safety, 2017). Secondly, the energy usage policy provides the procedures for assessing and ensuring of clear energy, appliances energy consumption and environmental pollution reduction procedures. Thirdly, environmental hygiene policies ensure that the environmental conditions within and around the kitchen is clean, sanitation assessment procedures and proper waste disposal guidelines or procedures. Fourthly, food storage is another hospitality area with c lear policies that state that proper food storage with safety considerations and pollution free system is the best sustainability workplace practice (ACT Government, 2017). The three workplace policies and procedures that can be identified within the kitchen include proper waste management, energy usage and food storage policies. Firstly, commercial kitchen comply with health policies that require hospitality industry to observe environmental hygiene and sanitation (Work Health and Safety and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2014). The kitchen is properly designed with good waste disposal system and clean water. Secondly, the kitchen complies with energy policies that require efficient energy usage and clean energy consumption with minimal pollution. Kitchen uses energy sources such as gas and electricity for both lighting and heating. Thirdly, the kitchen also upholds food storage policies that provide good food storage requirements with minimal environmental pollution. The components of workplace procurement or purchase policies are transparency policies, workplace safety and food storage policies. Firstly, when purchasing equipments or foods that are sold within the hospitality facility, the procedure should be clear and transparent. Secondly, equipment purchased need to be safety to user with minimal capability to pollute the environment. Thirdly, food purchase policies also provide the necessary storage requirement prior to purchase and after purchase with main focus on perishability of food stuffs (Clark, 2006). Some of the possible environment and resource issues that may be cause by procurement or purchase policies include safety of the equipments, waste management and resource utilization. Firstly, transparency purchase and procurement of equipments and food indicate that the equipment purchased are safer to use and has clear environmental implications. Secondly, food purchase and procurement policies ensure low food wastage due to spoilage, unhealthy food or unclean food that eventually pollutes the environment. Finally, proper purchase procedure and policies ensure proper utilization of financial resources and limited resource wastage. Area of operation process review Brief description of issue Estimated size or amount Usage of food, liquid ingredients in kitchen Foods are cooked or served raw as fruits Usage of electricity, gas and water The kitchen uses various electrical appliances such as oven, refrigerators and entertainment systems. Gas is also used for heating and cooking of food Many electrical appliances, equipments and tools Disposal of waste materials Kitchen garbage storage, disposal area Waste within the kitchen are disposed mainly to the main garbage located behind the kitchen 1 garbage or waste disposal area Recycling reusing Kitchen garbage storage/ disposal Some of the waste such as used containers are also reused as storage containers Storage of stock Food stock storage is mainly done on the deep freezers and refrigerators 4 storage equipments There are some external specialist sources that can also assist in advising the commercial kitchen on environmental and resource issues. Some of the specialists are environmental specialist and external auditors. External auditors provide the financial resource advice on procurement and purchase to ensure transparency, clear and limited resource wastage. Environmental specialists are good in assessment and advising on the environmental implication of various equipments purchased or food purchased. In collaboration with energy specialist, environmental specialists offer the best energy sources that can be purchase for used in the commercial kitchen (Kates, 2010). According to the inspection of the commercial kitchen there are three main areas that were inspected, health, environment and procurement. Firstly, health assessment process was done on food, kitchen environment and sanitation to assess the healthy conditions present in the kitchen. One of the internal sources of information is the health permit or license and health assessment records available in the management office. External source of information used include health regulation codes, health policies available from Department Of Health. Environmental review process checked on waste disposal, sanitation and energy efficiency to ensure there is minimal environmental pollutions. Thirdly, procurement process transparency process gives the guidelines that are used to source food and other equipments used within the kitchen (Bell Morse, 2008). During kitchen inspection, some of the environmental sustainability and resource usage issues identified are food usage, energy consumption, waste disposal and food storage. Firstly, food usage is important aspect of kitchen operation and environmental sustainability since it ensure food are properly utilized to avoid wastage that result in environmental pollution. Secondly, the kitchen uses electricity and gas for energy and energy consumption especially use of electricity and gas makes up clean energy that comply with energy regulations policies. Thirdly, waste disposal and waste management are other important aspect of environmental issues within the kitchen. Finally, food storage is another issues that touches both environment and resource management (White, Stallones Last, 2013). In order to address the issues identified in the kitchen there is need for continuous environmental health assessment procedures and proper food stock management system. Firstly, despite the clearly set health regulation compliance policies, there is need for continuous environmental health assessment to ensure that sanitation and waste management is done accordingly. This also makes the kitchen management and the staffs accountable of the waste disposal procedures used in the kitchen. Secondly, food stock management within the kitchen needs some improvements. As per the inspection, a lot of food is still wasted due to improper management especially cooked food that now has low storage life (Satin, 2008). Some of the recommendations for improvement include proper food usage, low energy consumption, waste disposal and food storage. There is need for proper food usage that minimizes wastage and this requires that food heating equipments such as oven are purchased within low energy requirement as compared to current oven. This will keep the temperature of cooked foods at the required level to avoid cooking more food. Secondly, before purchasing heating and lighting equipments their energy consumption ability need to be assessed so as to purchase only those with low energy requirement. Thirdly, though the kitchen has good waste disposal procedures, most of food waste especially leftovers still are not properly managed and there is need for properly disposing food wastes (Krebs, 2001). Finally, food storage in kitchen make use of deep freezers though this is also attached to high energy consumption. The procurement and purchase system need to be designed that incorporate good storage for p urchased food and before purchase to avoid buying already spoiled food. Assessment 1 The kitchen environmental sustainability and resource usage efficiency inspection records can be grouped into energy usage as shown below Assessment 2 Commercial kitchen uses various appliances that were identified during environmental sustainable and resource usage efficiency. The commercial kitchen uses various appliances such as refrigerators or deep freezers, oven, entertainment units and other appliances. These appliances use electricity as source of energy. Electricity usage does not pollute environment hence one of the best strategy that is sustainable to environment. References ACT Government (2017), accessible at https://www.health.act.gov.au/public-information/businesses/food-safety-regulation The Australian Government, Department of Health (2017), Food Safety and Environmental Health, accessible at: https://www.health.gov.au/ Clarke, R. King, J. (2006), The Atlas of Water. London: Earthscan Clark, D. (2006), A Rough Guide to Ethical Living. London: Penguin. Bell, S. Morse, S. (2008), Sustainability Indicators. Measuring the Immeasurable? 2nd edn. London: Earthscan. Australian Institute of Food Safety (2017), Food Safety Laws Accessible at: https://www.foodsafety.com.au/resources/videos/food-safety-laws Kates, R.W., ed. (2010), Readings in Sustainability Science and Technology an introduction to the key literatures of sustainability science CID Working Paper No. 213. Center for International Development, Harvard University. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, December 2010 Krebs, C.J. (2001), Ecology: the Experimental Analysis of Distribution and Abundance. Sydney: Benjamin Cummings. Satin, M. (2008), Food alert!: the ultimate sourcebook for food safety (2 ed.). New York, NY: Facts On File. Thomas, S. A. (2016), The Nature of Sustainability. Chapbook Press. Grand Rapids, Michigan White, F; Stallones, L; Last, J.M. (2013), Global Public Health: Ecological Foundations. Oxford University Press. Work Health and Safety and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2014 No. 14 pts 1, 3 date of assent 9 April 2014 ss 12 commenced on date of assent remaining provisions commenced 16 May 2014 (2014 SL No. 59)