Health and Safety
We want you to have a fun BIG Breakfast this April, so to help you stay safe while cooking and preparing food we have included some guidelines for a safe and healthy breakfast.
Food preparation guidelines from the NHS
1. Wash your hands thoroughly with soap and hot water and dry them before handling food and after handling raw foods (meat, fish, eggs and vegetables) touching the bin, going to the toilet, blowing your nose or touching animals (including pets).
2. Wash worktops before and after preparing food, particularly after they’ve been touched by raw meat, including poultry, raw eggs, fish and vegetables. You don’t need to use anti-bacterial sprays. Hot soapy water is fine.
3. Wash dishcloths and tea towels regularly and let them dry before you use them again. Dirty, damp cloths are the perfect place for bacteria to breed.
4. Use separate chopping boards for raw food and for ready-to-eat food. Raw foods can contain harmful bacteria that can spread very easily to anything they touch, including other foods, worktops, chopping boards and knives.
5. It’s especially important to keep raw meat away from ready-to-eat foods such as salad, fruit and bread. This is because these foods won’t be cooked before you eat them, so any bacteria that gets on to the foods won’t be killed.
6. Always cover raw meat and store it on the bottom shelf of the fridge where it can’t touch other foods or drip on to them.
7. Cook food thoroughly and check that it’s piping hot all the way through. Make sure poultry, pork, burgers, sausages and kebabs are cooked until steaming hot, with no pink meat inside.
8. Keep your fridge temperature below 5C. By keeping food cold, you stop food poisoning bugs growing.
9. If you have cooked food that you’re not going to eat straight away, cool it as quickly as possible (within 90 minutes) and store it in the fridge or freezer. Use any leftovers from the fridge within two days.
10. Don’t eat food that’s past its “use by” date label. These are based on scientific tests that show how quickly harmful bugs can develop in the packaged food.
For more information on food safety click here
Fire Safety Guidelines from the Government.
There are several things you can do to prevent fires in the kitchen. Make sure you don’t get distracted when you are cooking, and:
take pans off the heat or turn the heat down if you’re called away from the cooker, eg by a phone call- take care if you’re wearing loose clothing as it can catch fire easily
- don’t cook if you have been drinking alcohol or taken prescription drugs - you may get drowsy or lose concentration
- turn saucepans so the handles don’t stick out over the edge of the hob or over another ring
- double check that the cooker is off when you have finished cooking
- make sure tea-towels aren’t hanging over the cooker and don’t put oven gloves on top of a hot cooker
- keep the oven, hob and grill clean – built-up fat and bits of food can start a fire
- check that the toaster is clean and well away from curtains and empty the crumb tray regularly
- don’t fill a chip pan or other deep-fat fryer more than one-third full of oil. If possible use a thermostat-controlled deep-fat fryer, which will make sure the fat doesn’t get too hot.
For more information on fire safety click here
Food Hygiene is vitally important. Please take great care to ensure all food has been prepared, cooked, stored and displayed safely. Wallace & Gromit’s Children’s Foundation is not responsible for any expenses you may incur in organising an event and is not responsible for any event that you may organise and (except for personal injury or death caused by the negligence of the foundation) has no liability for any damage, injury or loss suffered by anyone participating in the event or anyone else involved in or affected by it.
