CulinaryKeeping raw allergen foods apart
Raw fish and crustacean shellfish are major food allergens and share the cooler and the prep table with other raw foods and with ready-to-eat food. The FDA Food Code keeps raw animal foods apart during storage, preparation, holding and display, and requires equipment and utensils that touched a raw animal food that is a major food allergen, such as raw fish, to be cleaned and sanitized before they touch another type of raw animal food.
Free to startScenarios
- Raw fish arrives and goes into the walk-in cooler with raw beef and salad greens.
- The same cutting board is needed for raw fish and then for raw poultry.
- Fish for sushi and cooked dishes share the prep area.
The steps
- Store, prepare, hold and display raw animal foods apart from raw ready-to-eat food, cooked ready-to-eat food and fruits and vegetables before they are washed. Critical point
- Keep each type of raw animal food apart from the others, such as fish from beef, pork and poultry: separate equipment for each type, or arrange them so one cannot contaminate another, and prepare them at different times or in separate areas. Critical point
- Store the food in packages, covered containers or wrappings.
- Before equipment or utensils that touched a raw animal food that is a major food allergen, such as raw fish, are used with another type of raw animal food, clean and sanitize them. Critical point
- Know the only exception: a succession of raw meat and poultry, each needing a higher cooking temperature than the one before. It does not cover raw fish.
Safety rules that stop the station
- Equipment that touched raw fish is never used for another type of raw animal food without being cleaned and sanitized first.
To pass
- Inspectors mark cleaning and sanitizing out of compliance if equipment or utensils that came into contact with a major food allergen such as fish were not cleaned and sanitized before use for other types of raw animal foods.
- Under the Food Code, fish includes crustaceans and all mollusks.
- Frozen, commercially processed and packaged raw animal food may be stored or displayed with or above frozen, commercially processed and packaged ready-to-eat food.
Official source
FDA Food Code 2022 (full document)
The FDA publishes the 2022 Food Code free: 3-302.11 separates raw animal foods and 4-602.11, explained in Annex 3, sets the cleaning after raw animal foods that are major food allergens.
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