The Washington State Retail Food Code requires retail food establishments to have written procedures for employees to follow when responding to vomiting or diarrheal events.
A cleanup plan consists of:
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Written procedures for safe cleanup - Make a training plan and detail specific procedures for cleaning up incidences of vomiting and diarrhea.
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A cleanup kit - Put together specific items you need for clean-up in the food establishment.
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Employee training - Identify the staff in charge of cleaning up after any vomiting and diarrhea event.
Use this Active Managerial Control (AMC) Toolkit to create your plan. The link will open a Microsoft Word document as a download.
Some duties required of the person in charge include:
- Informing employees when they must report symptoms of foodborne illness and ensure sick food workers stay home when necessary. Check our Employee Health guidelines.
- Knowing how to respond to imminent health hazards, such as a loss of water or electricity at the restaurant, a sewage back-up, fire, or other situations that pose a significant threat to health.
- Monitoring staff food safety practices, including making sure staff are washing hands properly; using thermometers to monitor food hot-holding and cold-holding temperatures; cooking food to the proper temperatures; cooling food properly; and otherwise handling foods safely.
- Training staff on food safety topics as they relate to their job duties and ensure staff are using these good food safety practices.
If you are a food truck, caterer, restaurant, or other food business looking for commissary kitchen space in King County, check out this new map offered by the Food Protection Program.
On the map, you can search for a kitchen by location, browse rental price ranges to fit your budget, or find kitchens with specialty equipment.
What are commissary kitchens?
Commissary kitchens are shared-use, licensed commercial kitchen spaces available for rent. They are essential for food businesses that need a safe, licensed kitchen to work from.
Most county health departments will allow you to use a non-traditional commissary kitchen as long as it meets the commercial kitchen requirements. Other places that can be approved might be: a gas station, faith based facilities, fraternal organizations, senior & community centers or halls, etc. the kitchen requirements most often need to include: a 3-compartment sink, hand wash sink, food prep sink, commercial refrigeration space, dry storage space, freezer space, restroom access, ice machine, key accessibility, cooking equipment, prep table, mop sink, waste disposal, and off-street parking with security for trucks/trailers.
If you are a commissary kitchen and would like to be added to the map or update your listing, please email your request to foodsafetystakeholders@kingcounty.gov
The new permit cycle will start on April 1 and end March 31, 2025. Permit fees have not changed this year.
We recently published a foodborne illness outbreak disclosure that was linked to guacamole bought in early February from PCC in West Seattle. Five people reported becoming sick, including one person hospitalized.
E. coli are bacteria. Some kinds of E. coli cause disease by making a toxin called Shiga toxin. The bacteria that make these toxins are called “Shiga toxin-producing” E. coli, or STEC for short.
Common symptoms of STEC infection include:
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- Diarrhea (often bloody)
- Severe stomach cramps
- Vomiting
Food recalls are removals of foods from the market that violate the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) regulations.
Recalled foods may cause injury or illness, especially for pregnant people or people with weakened immune systems due to age, chronic illness, or medical treatment.
Where can you find information about food recalls?
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Enforcement Report: Recalls of FDA-regulated products can be found in FDA’s Enforcement Report.
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Subscribe: FDA offers a recall subscription service. Users can choose to be notified of all recalls, commodity specific recalls (i.e., Food) and/or individual recall events on a daily or weekly basis.
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Public warnings are an effective way for companies to notify the public of a recall. These warnings are posted here. Not all recalls are posted on this page.
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USDA recalls: Recalls of United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulated products can be found here.
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Recalling company: The company that initiated the product removal issues a recall notice to their direct customers. These notices contain information to help customers identify recalled foods, including the product name, size and type of packaging, Universal Product Code (UPC), product codes, such as lot codes, sell-by, or use-by dates, pictures of the packaging and labels, and distribution information (i.e., the states and/or stores in which they were sold).
*Note: This is not a King County event. It is offered by QA, Quality Assurance & Food Safety.
To help better understand why rodents are attracted to your facility and how to manage them, join this free virtual conference where you are going to find an array of speakers to discuss best practices, tips, tricks and more.
When: Wednesday, April 3, 2024, from 9:00 am to 12:30 pm.
How to join: Please click the link below to see the complete schedule and register today! If you can’t participate on the day of the event, you will receive a link to a recording of the virtual conference within five business days of the event.
Prevent Cross-contamination when preparing food. Physical contamination occurs when foreign objects (such as metal filings, glass, jewelry, stones, or bone chips) contaminate foods and sometimes these objects can also be the vehicle for biological contamination if they harbor dangerous bacteria.
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