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water for the persons engaged in handling food. Soap, nail
brushes and towels must also be available;
(c) first aid equipment readily accessible for the use of persons
handling food;
(d) suitable accommodation for clothing;
(e) sinks for washing food and equipment;
(f) " Wash Hands " notices exhibited in w.c.'s.
2. Food may not be placed where there is risk of contamination.
3. There is stricter control of personal cleanliness. Food handlers
must refrain from smoking or from spitting while they are handling
open food or are in a room where there is open food.
4. Care must be taken in the transport or wrapping of food. Only
clean wrapping material should be used. Newspapers or other printed
material must not come into contact with any food other than uncooked
vegetables.
5. Certain foods that provide a particularly favourable medium for
food poisoning organisms and which are for immediate consumption
must be kept either at a temperature as low as that of a cool larder or
not less than that at which heat susceptible organisms would be killed.
6. Notice must be given to the Medical Officer of Health of any
persons who handle food and who are suffering from or are carriers of
certain infections.
7. Stalls selling meat or fish must be suitably covered and screened
at the sides and back in such a manner as to prevent contamination and
must have suitable waste receptacles.
8. Stalls selling food for immediate consumption must be provided
with washing facilities and there must be an adequate supply of hot and
cold water for this purpose.
These Regulations do not deal with the handling of food at docks,
wharfs, public warehouses and cold stores, carriers and wholesale vegetable
merchants' premises, store houses and slaughter houses. These are to be
the subject of separate regulations.
The regulations are not as powerful as many had hoped they would be.
In general in a district such as this they will perhaps give legal sanction
only to the level of those standards which had been reached by agreement.
To achieve what is desirable, reliance will have to be placed not on the
rigid implementation of these regulations as much as on the education and
outlook of those who handle foodstuffs. As circular 19/55 of the Ministry
of Health says:—
Food hygiene is recognised in the food and catering industries as
sound commercial practice serving their own business interests as well as
the public health, and the Minister is confident that local authorities will
find that in applying these Regulations they have the support of the food
and catering industries. Statutory regulations by themselves can never
achieve the reduction in food-borne diseases that everyone hopes to see.
The application of the Regulations will need continual supplementing
with publicity and education in order that food handlers and the public
may always have before them the importance of good food hygiene
practice.