Food grading is the process of assessing and inspecting various foods. The inspections and assessments involve sorting the food regarding:
- Quality
- Freshness
- Legal conformity
- Market value
Businesses such as restaurants, hotels and supermarkets can be given an overall hygiene rating. The process of achieving this rating includes a food safety officer from the local authority inspecting the business ensuring that the food hygiene law is followed.
A popular government food grading scheme is the Food Hygiene Rating System. This system gives businesses a rating from 0 – 5, but what does this mean?
0 = urgent improvement required
1 = major improvement necessary
2 = some improvement is necessary
3 = hygiene standards are generally satisfactory
4 = hygiene standards are good
5 = hygiene standards are very good
How are results determined?
To receive a good hygiene rating businesses must do well in the following 3 elements:
Handling of Food
How hygienically is the food handled? This includes how the food is cooked, prepared, cooled, stored and reheated.
Physical Condition of the business
The overall cleanliness of the environment that food is kept and served in is an important factor of food hygiene. This also includes customer comfort such as layout, lighting and ventilation.
Maintaining Hygiene
This looks at how the business manages to keep food safe, such as processes and training. The officer can then assess the level of confidence in standards being maintained in the future.
How can your business maintain Food Hygiene?
Different types of food can be graded to different standards. All of the tests carried out ensure that food safety and food hygiene standards are met.
The Food grading and sampling facility here at Edwards Transport provides our customers with a spacious hygienic environment in which to conduct sampling and grading activities.
Where can you get your products graded?
Here at Edwards Transport, in addition to our chilled storage and distribution system, we also have our own food grading and sampling facility. The facility is specialised towards grading dairy products, such as milk and cheese. However, it is an adaptable facility that can be used for a number of food products.
To find out more about the types of food grading that we provide, please visit our Food Grading page here.