Greetings,
I am glad to have found this forum because I have had some difficulty finding clear answers for with some grey areas of food safety. I appreciate the opportunity to ask some questions of you experts.
Background: I am an registered dietitian with a ServSafe certification which I think provides rudimentary food safety knowledge, but no where near the extent demonstrated on this forum. My specific concern is with a food program in the US called Meals on Wheels where we bring home delivered food to the homes of the elderly. There are some areas which I know we need to address to provide safer food to avoid time-temperature abuse. But I am hoping to get some input on some grey areas to help prioritize the issues we address.
The life of food from our point of view is: a) foods are prepared at a caterer; chilled and plated and refrigerated overnight. The plating is not special packaging such as reduced oxygen. b) delivered in chillers to several sites of our organization. c) delivered by our staff to individual homes. Our temperature problems begin from the time the food reaches our sites until it reaches the homes of consumers.
At this time my question is "Potentially Hazardous Food (PHF) or not?"
The 2009 US Food Code defines PHF (aka Time/Temperature Control for Safety Food):
Animal food that is raw or heat-treated; a plant food that is heat treated or consists of raw seed sprouts, cut melons, cut leafy greens, cut tomatoes or mixtures of cut tomatoes that are not modified in a way so that they are unable to support pathogenic microorganism growth or toxin formation, or garlic-in-oil mixtures that are not modified in a way so that they are unable to support pathogenic microorganism growth or toxin formation.
Food of Concern #1: Canned fruit which is removed from the can and individually cupped.
My thought: for the canned fruits we use (peaches, apricots, fruit cup, pears, pineapple), non-PHF because they are not heat treated and the pH is generally below 4.2.
Food of Concern #2: Frozen vegetables (generally carrot coins, green beans, corn, lima beans, peas, broccoli, and spinach) which are parboiled, then plated and chilled, delivered to consumer homes chilled to be heated by the consumer.
My thought from ServSafe training was non-PHF. However, I now question that because of the US Food Code statement "plant food that is heat treated." I think this means all of our cooked vegetables must be considered PHF (unless they are very low pH, but I don't see any that are). On the other hand, I have a hard time being equally concerned with green beans as I am with meatloaf.
Finally, I interpret the "cut leafy greens, cut tomatoes" clause as meaning fresh cut leafy greens and fresh cut tomatoes. Are commercially processed spinach or diced tomatoes included in that explicit clause per the US Food Code, or am I correct in inserting "fresh cut" and therefore they are not automatically part in the PHF category? In other words, I consider salads and tomato slices to be PHF, but I am not sure about frozen spinach and canned diced tomatoes.
Thank you so much for your responses.