In the food industry, personal hygiene is crucial for preventing foodborne illnesses and ensuring food safety. It involves maintaining a clean and healthy body and adhering to practices that minimise the risk of contamination. This includes regular handwashing, wearing clean clothing, covering wounds, and avoiding behaviours like touching hair or face while handling food.

In practice, these procedures look like:

• Washing hands with warm soapy water for at least 20 seconds, paying particular attention to areas between the fingers and under fingernails. This should be carried out before beginning food handling and also when leaving the food preparation area.
• Ensuring that all uniforms, work clothing and aprons are clean, free of any contamination and having spares sets to swap if contamination may have occurred.
• Make sure that long hair is tied back and wear hair nets to prevent hair falling into the food.
• Always cover any cuts, sores, or wounds with a waterproof dressing to avoid contamination, making sure this covering can easily be identified should it come off the skin and into the production area.
• Personal health of food production staff should be monitored to make sure there are no coughs and sneezes on the production line which can easily spread germs and contaminants.

Undertaking correct training in personal hygiene is paramount to the collective understanding and following of hygiene procedures by management for all factory employees and visitors.