NS305 Unit 3 Rental Kitchen Audit Example

Forty-Five Degrees Behind a Dial Set to Cold: A Unit 3 Kitchen Audit Report on a Shared Student Rental

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

NS305: Food Safety

Unit 3 Kitchen Audit Report

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The rental, its four housemates and the readings are composite; the Food Code provisions, refrigerator survey and home food safety review cited are real.

Scope and Yardstick

Date: a Sunday in February, 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. Present: the auditor and two of the three other housemates, who consented to the audit and to photographs. Equipment: a calibrated probe thermometer, an appliance thermometer and a flashlight.

The checklist was built from the Food Code (U.S. Food and Drug Administration [FDA], 2022). The Food Code governs licensed food establishments, not private homes, so it serves here as a yardstick rather than a rule. Where the Code's requirement makes no sense in a home, such as a separate handwashing sink, the report says so and judges the hazard rather than the fixture.

Method

Each area of the kitchen was inspected in the order food moves through it: storage, preparation, cooking and cleaning. Each observation was recorded with its location, the Food Code category it falls under, the hazard it creates and a corrective action with a target date. Temperatures were taken with the probe in food, not only with the appliance thermometer in the air, because a refrigerator's dial setting says nothing about what the food inside it is experiencing. Every finding was then classed as priority, meaning it could directly cause illness, or core, meaning it affects sanitation or maintenance.

Priority Findings

Finding 1. Refrigerator temperature. The dial was set to 4, labeled "colder," yet the appliance thermometer on the middle shelf read 44°F and a probe in a container of leftover rice read 45°F. The Food Code holds cold food at 41°F or below. Above that, bacteria such as Listeria and Bacillus cereus multiply in the rice and deli meat stored there. Corrective action: turn the dial to 6, move the thermometer to the door-side top shelf, the warmest point, and recheck after 24 hours. Target: same day.

Finding 2. Raw chicken stored above ready-to-eat food. A package of raw chicken thighs sat on the second shelf, leaking onto a container of leftover pasta on the shelf below. The Food Code orders refrigerated storage by final cooking temperature, so ready-to-eat food goes on top and raw poultry, cooked to the highest temperature, goes on the bottom. Corrective action: discard the pasta, clean the shelf, put raw meat in a tray on the bottom shelf. Target: same day.

Finding 3. One sink for everything. The only sink held a dish rack, a colander of rinsed lettuce and a pan soaking from breakfast. There is no clear path to wash hands after handling raw chicken without touching produce or dirty dishes. The Code's separate handwashing sink is impractical in a rental, but the hazard is real: hands carry raw-meat bacteria onto ready-to-eat food. Corrective action: move the dish rack onto the counter, keep the left basin empty for handwashing during cooking, and set soap and paper towels beside it. Target: one week.

Finding 4. One cutting board for raw meat and produce. The single plastic board was deeply scored and was used for raw chicken and salad vegetables, rinsed between uses. Rinsing does not remove bacteria from knife grooves. Corrective action: buy a second board in a different color for raw meat only, and wash both in hot soapy water after each use. Target: one week.

Each priority finding sits at a point where bacteria from raw food can reach food that will not be cooked again, which is why these four outrank fifteen others that look worse.

Core Findings

The fifteen core findings are grouped by area rather than listed in full. In storage there were five: four containers of leftovers carried no date; two opened jars of salsa had sat for more than a month; the freezer held a torn bag of chicken with freezer burn; eggs were kept in the door shelf, the warmest part of the refrigerator; and a bag of spinach in the crisper had turned slimy and was touching a block of cheese. In preparation there were four: a sponge with a sour smell sat beside the sink; one dish towel served for both hands and dishes; the counter was wiped with an all-purpose spray that was dried off at once instead of left for the contact time on its label; and the can opener blade was crusted with old food. In cooking there were three: the stove hood filter was coated with grease, the microwave interior was splattered, and there was no food thermometer in the house. In cleaning there were three: the trash can had no lid, the floor behind the refrigerator was sticky, and the cabinet under the sink had a slow leak that had softened its floor.

None of these will make someone ill by tomorrow, but several make the priority findings harder to fix. Undated leftovers mean no one knows which food has been in the warm refrigerator longest. No food thermometer means chicken is judged by color, which is unreliable.

Rows That Surprised the Auditor

Three findings surprised me. First, the refrigerator. All four of us assumed that a dial set toward "colder" meant cold, and none of us owned a thermometer. That is common: in a national survey, only 11 percent of respondents had a thermometer in their refrigerator, and people who had owned one were more likely to keep it at a safe temperature (Kosa et al., 2007).

Second, the cutting board. One housemate is a culinary student and knew the rule, but the house had one board because no one bought a second. Knowing a rule did not change the kitchen.

Third, how confident we were. A review of home food safety research found that consumers often do not see the home as a risky place, even though many foodborne illnesses start there (Byrd-Bredbenner et al., 2013). We were no different. Before the audit, every one of us would have rated the kitchen as safe.

One Week Later

A follow-up visit the next Sunday checked each priority finding. The refrigerator's probe reading was 38°F with the dial at 6. Raw meat was stored on a tray on the bottom shelf. A second cutting board, red for raw meat, had been bought. The left sink basin was empty, with soap beside it, though the dish rack had crept back once during the week. Of the core findings, a food thermometer had been bought and a roll of masking tape and a marker now sat on top of the refrigerator for dating leftovers.

The audit has limits. It captured one afternoon and one follow-up; it could not observe how the four of us cook on a busy weeknight. The yardstick was written for restaurants. And the auditor lives in the house, which made access easy but may also have made some findings easier to excuse.

References

Byrd-Bredbenner, C., Berning, J., Martin-Biggers, J., & Quick, V. (2013). Food safety in home kitchens: A synthesis of the literature. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 10(9), 4060-4085. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph10094060

Kosa, K. M., Cates, S. C., Karns, S., Godwin, S. L., & Chambers, D. (2007). Consumer home refrigeration practices: Results of a web-based survey. Journal of Food Protection, 70(7), 1640-1649. https://doi.org/10.4315/0362-028X-70.7.1640

U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (2022). Food Code 2022. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.fda.gov/food/fda-food-code/food-code-2022