A message on the current COVID-19 pandemic.
I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you what we are doing in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our consultants are specialist food safety consultants and consequently are very well versed in the principles of good personal hygiene and infection control. Nevertheless, this is an extraordinary situation and we have developed a specific procedure (which consultants will carry with them) to maintain safety and to play our part in preventing cross infection.
Our consultants also perform all their administrative duties from home, which has reduced the risk from close contact in office-based operations.
Our procedure requires our consultants to wash their hands immediately upon entry to any customer site, frequently during the day and to carry, and use, an alcohol-based hand sanitiser. We also strive to minimise personal contact at this time, respecting the minimum 1 metre distance recommended by the UK Chief Medical and Chief Scientific Officers, as far as is practical and possible.
For now, our consultants have been asked to organise trips to client sites by private car, rather than public transport, which has reduced the risk from close contact on trains and other forms of public transport.
Fundamental to our procedure is a requirement to declare any cold-like symptoms and to respect the need to isolate for 7 days should symptoms arise, or 14 if more than 1 person in the household. With this in mind we have developed a generic Visitor / Contractor COVID 19 health declaration, which will use during this crisis when visiting client sites.
We believe that tools such as this are absolutely key to balancing infection control with continuing to perform our work duties, to support our UK economy, which is fragile and could be seriously and perhaps irrevocably compromised if UK industry simply shuts down, without basing decisions on credible risk. We remain open for business for all your food safety, BRC Global Standards, SALSA and HACCP training, consulting and auditing needs and believe that the above precautions are, for the moment, sufficient in reducing risk to acceptable levels.
We would also like to remind and assure all of our clients that COVID 19 is a virus, will not grow in food, and transmission through food is extremely unlikely – a position stated recently on the Food Standards Agency website.
If you have any questions, then please do not hesitate to contact us
Please check the Institute of Food Science & Technology’s guide to COVID-19 for the food industry.
Also check out this flow diagram for symptoms of COVID-19 and what they mean.
Richard Mallett
[email protected]
