Hand hygiene in the food industry

We are proud to announce our newest recognition: Hand-in-Scan received the 4^th place on the “Become a Link” competition organized by the Hungarian National Food Chain Safety Office on the Global handwashing day in Budapest. Our essay entitled “Hand hygiene in the food industry” points out the importance of the correct hand washing procedure in the food industry.

More than 200 different food-borne diseases are known (source) and one person out of three in industrialized countries may be affected by them each year. In the USA, some 76 million cases of food-borne illness, resulting in 325 000 hospitalizations and 5000 deaths, are estimated to occur each year (WHO/Food safety). Most food-borne pathogens are transmitted by fecal contaminants associated with poor personal hygiene. Therefore, hand washing is critical to maintaining safety in the food preparation and restaurant industries. Even at home, improper hand washing can spread infection rapidly through the family (University of Florida, Food-borne Diseases).

As we learned from dr. Noémi László’s presentation (2^nd place with “Conscious consumer – Rising food safety”) two-third of food-borne diseases can be connected to the processing of food, because the ratio of infected ingredients would not give this high number of food-borne illness.

It is clear that we need clean hands from farm to fork.

Péter Szerémy presenting the potential of Hand-in-Scan in food industry

See presentation (Hungarian only).

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