To glove or not to glove?; that is the question!

People sometimes ask,  “why do some staff wear blue plastic gloves when handling food whereas others don’t wear gloves?”

We follow the best practice for food handlers.  Find below a link the guide to best practice by the UK Food Standards Agency.   Please note that this is best practice for the UK; other countries have different problems with clean water, cultural practices etc. so the advice for them may be different.

glove image courtesy of wikipedia - one of our favourite websites!

BASICALLY:-

It is generally recommended by food hygiene experts a proper hand washing regime is better than using disposable gloves in most circumstances.     

It is a common misconception that wearing disposable gloves prevents the risk of cross contamination of foods due to staff hygiene and handling problems.     But the outside of the glove is just as likely to become contaminated as a hand so the gloves should be thrown away every time the food handler would normally wash their hands.

When wearing gloves people perceive that their hands are clean even though the gloves they are wearing aren’t and so don’t change them frequently enough.      With bare hands, diligent food handlers wash them much more frequently; it becomes a habit.  

In general our foodhandlers do not wear plastic gloves but would do so in the following circumstances:-

• The job they are doing has been identified as requiring gloves by law or by us.
• They use a glove to cover a cut or a plaster on their hand.

• The dough, batter, oil etc. being handled causes irritation.

Best practice is clean, frequently washed hands.

• You cannot even enter our bakery unless you have washed your hands.
• Even visitors to the bakery (who have no intention of touching anything) have to do so - and sign a form to say they understand the hygiene rules.
• We run training courses for our staff on how to wash your hands; we even have a test that a new starter has to pass before they are allowed to work.
• We do random bacteria swab tests on our staffs hands - if one of us fails the clean hands test they get a warning which, could lead to dismissal - it’s that serious!    Though in reality someone failing a test is also retrained, counselled, instructed, supervised, looked at in a stern way or whatever is needed to pass the test every time.
• No jewellery, no nail polish, short well kept finger nails.
• We have special food grade hand sanitisers and creams so that staff can take care of their hands.

Our cleaners nearly always wear rubber gloves to protect them from the cleaning solutions they are using.

The gloves provided by Fosters Bakery are latex free to prevent allergies for the freguent wearers. 

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Click the logo to visit the FSA website for the latest good practice in food.

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If you have any queries about the hygiene practices of our company here is my direct contact number - call me, email me or whatever.     I am really nice, honest!  I want to hear from you.

John Foster
Managing Director

Mobile number 07971 597410
Direct desk number 01226 215904
email jrf@bake-it.com

Please don’t call if it’s just to sell hygiene products; our purchasing Director, Ian Taylor deals with this.  Ian’s contact details are in the suppliers guide on the left side of our “find us” page.