Audit Ready!

As a person who handles baked goods you have an important responsibility to act on food safety and hygiene. You can protect other people from getting sick, protect your bakery’s reputation in the food industry as well as protect your job.

The benefits of having your bakery checked, proofed and cleared by an accredited cleaning audit party far outweigh the labour of getting your bakery ready for the audit. In fact, The South African Health Act, 2003 (Act 61 of 2003) of Foodstuffs, Cosmetics and Disinfectants Act (Act 54 of 1972) contain provisions directing the food industry to ensure the provision of safe, quality food and to maintain a high degree of hygiene at all times.

A sure way to measure your bakery’s degree of hygiene would be to conduct a hygiene audit by a trusted, accredited food safety and hygiene entity.

What to expect

Although audits may differ from company to company, Swift Silliker, South Africa’s first commercial food-testing laboratory, states that each audit is customised to meet the individual needs of the customer and his/her particular industry. When undergoing a hygiene audit your bakery can expect to receive the following feedback:

Scientific Evaluation Report. A scientific evaluation of the results from microbiological testing of swabs and products sampled during the audit will be reported.

Comprehensive hygiene audit reports. A list of deficiencies observed during visual inspections and detailed action plans.

Temperature measurements. A proof control temperatures report is included to ensure product safety and efficiency.

Good quality rating system. This is included in the audit report to evaluate performance and progress. This, together with en executive summary of the performance provides the manager or owner of the bakery with a management tool to measure and improve hygiene standards.

A gloved hand injecting an egg with a syringe beside a rack of laboratory test tubes

How to prepare

We spoke to Jomein, a representative of The HYCHEM Group and she informed The Baking Times of essential starting points for any bakery looking to participate in a hygiene audit.

Ensure your chemical supplier is accredited. Before undergoing a hygiene audit, ensure that the supplier you get your chemicals from is accredited. Eg. All HYCHEM cleaning products undergo stringent quality control and are accredited to ensure their chemicals are of superior quality.

Record hygiene procedures. This can be done by implementing a hygiene file. The hygiene file will store records of all cleaning schedules, chemicals used in the kitchen and regular hygiene routines that your bakery uses.

Staff training. Ensure that all staff members have efficient knowledge of personal and kitchen hygiene. This can be re-enforced by staff training options thru HYCHEM. Their kitchen hygiene training course covers: bacteria control, food handling procedures, kitchen equipment, safe handling procedures and personal hygiene.

Laboratory testing equipment and a rack of test tubes beside a bundle of wheat ears

There are a number of reasons why third-party audits are done. These include but are not limited to the following:

A genuine desire to improve food safety, quality and sanitation.
Customer requirement to verify a vendor’s programs.
Potential marketing advantage.
Looking for a third set of eyes.
Troubleshooting/problem solving.
Not having the resources in-house.

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