Food Safety

May 24, 2024

Michigan

Overdoor, France, ca. 1825; | Smithsonian Design Museum

Education communities have significant food safety responsibilities. Risk gets pushed around global food service counterparties; a drama in itself and one that requires coverage in a separate blog post.*

Since 2013 we have been following the development of food safety standards; among them ANSI/NSF 2: Food Equipment one of a constellation of NSF food safety titles whose provisions cover bakery, cafeteria, kitchen, and pantry units and other food handling and processing equipment such as tables and components, counters, hoods, shelves, and sinks. The purpose of this Standard is to establish minimum food protection and sanitation requirements for the materials, design, fabrication, construction, and performance of food handling and processing equipment.

It is a relatively stable standard; developed to support conformance revenue for products. A new landing page seems to have emerged in recent months:

https://www.nsf.org/testing/food

You may be enlightened by the concepts running through this standard as can be seen on a past, pre-pandemic agenda:

NSF 2 Food Safety 2019 Meeting Packet – Final Draft

NSF 2 Food Safety 2019 Meeting Summary – August 21-22 Ann Arbor NSF Headquarters

NSF 2 Food Equipment Fabrication Agenda – FEF – TG – 2021-01-12

Not trivial agendas with concepts that cut across several disciplines involving product manufacture, installation, operation and maintenance. We find a very strong influence of organizations such as Aramark and Sodexo. More on that in a separate post.

Ranchview High School Cafeteria / Irving, Texas

This committee – along with several other joint committees –meets frequently online. If you wish to participate, and receive access to documents that explain the scope and scale of NSF food safety standards, please contact Allan Rose, (734) 827-3817, [email protected]. NSF International welcomes guests/observers to nearly all of its standards-setting technical committees. We expect another online meeting hosted by this committee any day now.

Keep in mind that all NSF International titles are on the standing agenda of our Nourriture (Food) colloquia; open to everyone. See our CALENDAR for the next meeting.