Receiving food items: criteria and checks

22 min

Let's begin

At 7 a.m. a supplier's pick-up truck stops outside a school kitchen with sacks of maize flour and beans, crates of eggs, a box of frozen fish and cans of milk. The cook in charge has about ten minutes before the driver leaves. If she signs for everything without looking, a split sack of flour full of weevils, a box of fish that thawed on the road and a swollen can become the school's problem, and perhaps its pupils' illness. If she checks against clear criteria, she returns the bad items at once, at the supplier's cost. Safe storage starts at the door, with receiving.

Definition

Receiving: checking food when it is delivered, then accepting or rejecting each item and recording it, before it is stored.

Use-by date: a safety date on foods that spoil quickly, such as fresh milk, yoghurt and raw meat. After it, the food must not be eaten, even if it looks and smells fine.

Best-before date: a quality date on longer-lasting foods such as flour, rice and canned food. After it the food may be stale or lose flavour, but it is not necessarily unsafe.

Delivery note: the supplier's list of what was delivered, which the receiver checks against the order before signing.

The receiving checks

Check deliveries when there is time and space, never in the middle of serving a meal, and finish before the driver leaves. Use a clean, working probe thermometer: feeling the food is not a measurement.

Food	Accept	Reject
Raw meat and poultry	5 °C or colder; normal colour (red beef, pink poultry); firm; fresh smell	slimy surface; grey or green patches; sour or bad smell; warm
Fresh fish (e.g. tilapia, sambaza)	clear, bulging eyes; bright red gills; firm flesh that springs back; packed in ice	cloudy, sunken eyes; brown or grey gills; soft flesh; strong smell
Frozen food	hard-frozen at −18 °C or colder	soft; large ice crystals or a frozen block of liquid in the box (thawed and refrozen)
Milk and milk products	5 °C or colder; within the use-by date; sealed	sour smell; lumps; swollen packets; past the date
Eggs	clean, uncracked shells; cool	cracked, dirty or leaking eggs
Fruit and vegetables	firm, the right colour, clean	mould, rot, deep bruises, wilting, insects
Dry goods (flour, rice, beans, sugar)	dry, sealed bags; within the best-before date	damp or torn bags; weevils, droppings or webbing; mould; lumps
Canned food	clean, undamaged, labelled cans	swollen (bulging) ends; leaks; rust; deep dents, especially on the seam

On packaged food also read the label: the name of the product and its maker, the batch number, the dates and the storage instructions. Many processed foods in Rwanda also carry the S-Mark of the Rwanda Standards Board (RSB), which shows the product has been certified against a Rwandan standard.

StateFoodSafety: a short training film on receiving a food delivery. Watch for the checks the receiver makes before the driver leaves. The film gives American temperatures in °F: 41 °F is 5 °C.

Worked example

Worked example 1: reading the thermometer. A new thermometer from abroad shows degrees Fahrenheit. A chilled delivery of chicken reads 39 °F and a box of yoghurt reads 50 °F. Accept or reject each?

Convert with $C = \frac{5}{9}(F - 32)$
Chicken: $\frac{5}{9}(39 - 32) = \frac{5}{9} \times 7 \approx 3.9$ °C, colder than 5 °C: accept.
Yoghurt: $\frac{5}{9}(50 - 32) = \frac{5}{9} \times 18 = 10$ °C, warmer than 5 °C: reject, and note the temperature on the delivery note.

Worked example

Worked example 2: dates and damage. On 6 October a kitchen receives: (a) yoghurt marked "use by 5 October"; (b) a sack of rice "best before" next June, with a small tear and dry rice; (c) cans of tomatoes, one with a bulging lid; (d) maize flour with tiny moving insects. Decide for each item.

(a) Reject: past its use-by date, so unsafe whatever it looks like.
(b) Inspect the tear: if the rice is dry and free of insects, accept and move it at once into a sealed bin; record the damage.
(c) Reject the bulging can. Swelling can mean gas made by bacteria, including those that cause botulism, a rare but very dangerous food poisoning. The rest of the batch can be accepted if undamaged.
(d) Reject: the insects are weevils, which spread to the rest of the store.

Warning

Common mistake. Leaving deliveries standing in the sun or on the floor while you finish other work. Chilled and frozen foods warm up within minutes, and sacks on the floor take up damp and attract rodents. Check, then store frozen food first, chilled food next and dry goods last. Lift heavy sacks with a straight back and bent knees, or with a helper.

Tip

Memory hook: "Clean, Cold, Closed, Current, Correct." A clean vehicle; cold enough; packaging closed and whole; dates current; the correct items and quantity.

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Practice

Explain the difference between a use-by date and a best-before date.
List the six checks made when receiving a delivery, in order.
Give three signs that fresh fish should be rejected.
Why must a can with a bulging end be rejected?
A thermometer reading is 45 °F. Convert it to °C to one decimal place, and say whether chilled milk at this temperature should be accepted.
Frozen chicken arrives with a thick block of pink ice at the bottom of the box. What does this show, and what should the receiver do?
A school receives food at lunchtime because it is when the cook is in the kitchen. Evaluate this arrangement and suggest a better one.

Show answersHide answers

A use-by date is about safety: the food must not be eaten after it. A best-before date is about quality: after it the food may be stale but is not necessarily unsafe.
Vehicle and driver clean; temperature; packaging and labels; dates; quality (look, smell, feel); quantity against the order.
Cloudy or sunken eyes; brown or grey gills; soft flesh that does not spring back; a strong smell; not packed in ice (any three).
The swelling can be caused by gas from bacteria growing inside, including the bacteria that cause botulism, so the contents may be dangerous.
$\frac{5}{9}(45 - 32) = \frac{5}{9} \times 13 \approx 7.2$ °C. Reject: chilled milk should be 5 °C or colder.
The chicken has thawed and been refrozen (the juice froze in the box). Reject it, write the reason on the delivery note and tell the supplier.
Poor: during lunch the cook is busy serving, so checks are rushed and chilled food may wait in the heat. Better: agree a delivery time before or after the meal service, when the cook can check everything and store it at once.

Sources and credits

Lesson text, Figure 1, table, worked examples and practice: written by Ganzaa. Receiving temperatures and the use-by and best-before rules follow the UK Food Standards Agency and WHO Five Keys to Safer Food (2006), summarised in Ganzaa's own words. S-Mark: Rwanda Standards Board.
Photo: Proper Food Safety Behaviors: Appliances and Thermometers, United States Department of Agriculture, Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
Video: Receiving, StateFoodSafety, embedded from YouTube.

1The receiving checks

The receiving checks