Food safety – personal hygiene

Transcript

Miel Meyer - Meyer Gouda Cheese

Personal hygiene is another key factor. We’re working with the milk, so it’s important for us as cheesemakers and helpers to make sure we’re clean ourselves. Wearing hairnets to prevent your hair falling in. It’s important that your hands are clean – we do get into the milk with our arms so it’s important they’re clean so you’re not introducing foreign bacteria. As the starter bacteria is growing initially, it still leaves room for foreign bacteria to grow as well.

Your clothing – obviously we don’t go onto to the farm, into the cowshed and then straight into the cheesemakery. We wear white gumboots, white shorts, white t-shirt. The reason it’s white is then you can see when it’s dirty – it’s cleaned every day – but if you had say a dark t-shirt, then you might not know if there’s something on there, so that’s why you call it your whites.

So there’s those strict rules in place, and usually during the staff training and when the staff first come to the cheese factory, those are the things that are talked about and from time to time re-explained if needed.