Important Records and Documentation

Throughout this training, you have learnt about your role in food safety. You will as part of your role, depending on what this is be required to record and document critical controls throughout your day. These can be paper-based or digital but it is important that you always do so in order that the food safety management team can monitor the process and verify it works. 

These records and documents form part of any audit process and for "Due Diligence Defence" are required. Keeping honest and accurate records makes for a robust food safety management system.

Due diligence in food safety refers to being able to prove that your business has done everything reasonably possible to prevent food safety breaches.

When filling in your records it is so very important, to be honest, and accurate. If something is wrong you must be clear about what and say what you did about it. Here are some examples:

• You record a core temperature of 61°C for a pork joint: you note this and state you carried on cooking until 63°C or above was reached.
• You notice a delivery with damaged packaging. You record this and state you rejected the delivery.
• You notice a fridge is 9°C. Your record it and state you have reported it to your manager and what you did with the food. If the food was under 5°C you can safely state you moved the food to another fridge and reported it. If not state you discarded the food.

To recap below is a list of some of the records and documentation you will see are part of your everyday role:

• Recommended supplier list.
• Delivery checklist.
• Opening and closing checklist.
• Fridge/freezer temperature records.
• Cooking, chilling, holding and reheating temperatures records.
• Cleaning & maintenance schedules.
• Allergen sheets.
• Waste records.

Please note that the HACCP management team on board will have all other documents as part of the HACCP Plan.