The food sanitation rules require the person in charge or the manager to be most responsible for

What is a food sanitation rules poster?

A food sanitation rules poster is a visual tool that contains basic sanitation guidelines for food handlers working in the food industry. This poster focuses on how to specifically clean and sanitize areas of your food service establishment or processing facility while creating an environment that is not susceptible to contamination of food.

The food sanitation rules poster gives specific guidelines on preparing dishes, utensils, and food contact surfaces for sanitizing if you do not have an available dishwasher between food preparation. This simple step is essential to ensure that the sanitation process becomes effective and will not affect the safety of your foods.

The whole process of sanitation must include the following step instructions:

1. Manually remove all excess food waste and obstacles on the surface.

2. Wash the surface in contact with food with warm, soapy water rinse (43°C/110°F) to remove any oil residue from the surface. Use an appropriate brush if needed.

3. Rinse the surface with clean water, making sure that there is no soap residue.

4. Soak the surface in your chosen sanitizer following the manufacturer's instructions. You can wash counters with bleach water or use hot water (180°F/ 82°C) for sanitation.

5. Allow the sanitized surface to air dry.

This poster also includes information such as the recommended concentration of common surface sanitizers, water temperature for sanitizing, and other additional preparation for sanitation to prevent bacteria growth. Sanitation includes the counter for customer self-service and restroom facilities, not just the food preparation area.

In addition to the rules of food sanitation poster, we also offer other food safety documents such as an informative poster for minimum cooking temperature for raw meats and cleaning schedule templates. We have compiled these food safety documents for your convenience and offer everything for free! Check out our HACCP plan template hub for more.

At FoodDocs, we also offer free food safety tools such as a food safety quiz that can become part of your internal training program.

Who needs a food sanitation rules poster?

Food sanitation is an essential and non-negotiable aspect of food safety for any common facility and food business. This means that sanitation will always be part of your day-to-day operations whether you are running a restaurant, long-term care facilities, a mobile food unit, farmers market vendor, a school cafeteria, a food processing plant, a consumer retail food store, or any food joint.

To uphold the responsibility of maintaining food safety during your hours of operation and preventing releasing hazardous ready-to-eat food, the food sanitation rules require someone at a restaurant to be well-versed on how to apply sanitation procedures. Use this poster as part of your business food handler training program.

Why is sanitation important?

Foodborne illnesses are most likely from food facilities that do not practice sanitation. The lack of sanitation makes food unsafe for consumption. Every food business is expected to have a very high standard for maintaining sufficient food sanitation. In fact, unsanitary conditions and hazardous foods in a licensed facility can be grounds for a serious penalty during food safety annual inspections from health departments or any regulatory authority. 

Food sanitation significantly reduces the risk of causing any food product sample safety issues, consumer complaints, and unnecessary food costs, including a foodborne illness outbreak or harming consumers from food contamination. Control for safety is achieved by regularly applying food sanitation rules. It also helps create a conducive environment for working and additional preparation in every communal kitchen of the food industry to help keep contaminating factors such as pests out of your area.

In general, food sanitation includes the following aspects:

• Personal hygiene and employee health (e.g., proper use of food service gloves and handwashing stations)
• Cooking raw meat to the correct food temperatures
• Control of common food allergen
• Adequate storage facilities for ready-to-eat foods (e.g., adequate temperature controls for holding food in ice, heated cabinets, or steam tables)
• Equipment maintenance (e.g., regular cleaning of meat slicer and refrigerator for frozen food)
• Sanitizing of food contact surfaces
• Packaging for prepared food (e.g., sanitation and storage of food packaging containers)
• Pest management
• Food waste management

These mentioned food safety areas help create a safe food preparation environment. They are also the main areas that every health department inspector and public health authorities check. Food sanitation is an essential part of pre-opening inspection as well as post-closing. Any consumer complaint about sanitation may warrant public inspection from authorized government units.

The keys to consistent maintenance of food sanitation are to properly train market operators and food handlers to perform the base of operation and monitor them religiously. The food service sanitation manager is responsible for knowing the food sanitation rules and communicating them with their employees.