Intentional food contamination by staff
Another case of staff sabotage or intentional contamination has come to light today. An employee of a Burger King store, located near Cleveland in the USA, decided to take a photograph of himself standing in two tubs of lettuce. He then posted the photograph to 4chan which is an image-based bulletin board where anyone can post comments and share images with the comment “This is the lettuce you eat at Burger King”.
Unfortunately for the culprit, he managed to upset particular viewers of the image who then went on the hunt to uncover when and where the photograph was taken and by who. According to Hypervocal, the identification process took less than 15 minutes to complete. Embedded GPS data from the uploaded photograph was used to locate the Burger King store where the offence occurred. In addition, surrounding food packaging was also able to be used in the identification process.
Burger King’s response
Burger King released the following statement to Fox 8:
“Burger King Corp. has recently been made aware of a photo posted on a social networking site that allegedly shows a BURGER KING® restaurant employee violating the company’s stringent food handling procedures. Food safety is a top priority at all BURGER KING® restaurants and the company maintains a zero-tolerance policy against any violations such as the one in question. The restaurant where this photo was allegedly taken is independently-owned and operated by a BURGER KING® franchisee. The franchisee has taken swift action to investigate this matter and terminated the employee involved in this incident.”
Protect your business
There are a number things that you can do to protect your food business from this kind of staff sabotage or intentional contamination. This includes having clearly documented employee social media policies, restriction of person belongings (including mobile phones) within food production areas, adequate supervision and obviously – adequate documented and implemented employee health and hygiene procedures.
While the last paragraph is intended to protect the business it does not protect the public purchasing the product. The fact that people were angry and the restaurant took action to remove the offending employee has value. Restaurants need to have open kitchens where the patrons have a line of sight access to the kitchen and food prep areas, additional surveillance cameras need to be set up that can monitor staff activities where food is handled so as to provide management with ability to audit working conditions as well as food safety procedures within the kitchen and food prep areas. opportunities exist for developers to create food safety identification systems that utilize surveillance and can mark for quick viewing situation where food is dropped, containers set on floors inappropriately, and other identified or potential problems that can be recognized that will reduce potential for problems relating to disgruntled staff creating food safety problems and creating training procedures to prevent food safety issues before they create illness in patrons.
Thanks for your sharing your insight Douglas with the HACCP Mentor community.