Bloody fools having a go at much needed regulation of charity BBQs

cmdwedge said :

What is this new regulation actually addressing? Give some examples of issues that have arisen (for instance, salmonella poisoning) from a charity BBQ.

Give some examples of children who have drowned in backyard pools in Canberra, yet the regulations around pools keep getting worse.

Busy body bureaucrats.

Holden Caulfield said :

Katy Gallagher MLA retweeted:

Better Health @BetterHealthGov

So, we are getting “better health” by going from zero instances of food-poisoning-by-sausage-sizzle per year, to ?how many??

How do we do better than zero?

Lucky the ACT Public Service with its army of 23,000 public servants have time to attend to these vitally pressing issues, eh?

Hang on, I’ve worked for them – this new legislation represents somebody actually having done some work – must have therefore by definition been prepared by contractors.

far out

go away

certification for cooking sausages?

then what… a license for consuming sausages so that people can prove they have the required skills to chew before swallowing a whole sausage and a waiver you need to sign before consuming a sausage?

then black market sausage vendors with their underground sausage cooking which is unregulated? you can tell if a black market sausage vendor is operating in your suburb, they usually have a bbq in the backyard and are sometimes seen to be drinking beer and snapping the tongs which can highly dangerous and maybe pinch you, which can sometimes draw blood which can leave you susceptible to blood borne diseases such as aids if you come into contact with someone infected with such a disease…

then an app requiring a SausageID so you can log in and share your sausage eating photos and comments with people who are also consuming sausages… and a riotACT tuesday post with photos of people eating sausages who are clearly not licensed to consume sausages?

far out

go away

leave the world alone

As someone with a lot of experience in running charity catering events, I agree that the typical sausage sizzle is fairly low risk. Stock is generally turned over fairly quickly so it doesn’t have a chance to go bad.

Doesn’t all of this come under the things you should know or have learnt whilst growing up or else you’re a bloody idiot?

Unfortunately, most of the community groups I’ve been involved in seemed to attract more than their fare share of bloody idiots. You would be amazed at what some people consider acceptable hygiene practice – and I mean personal hygiene as well as food prep hygiene. Gloves are probably the worst contributors. Some people seem to think that gloves have magical protective properties that allow them to wear the same pair of gloves all day whilst doing different tasks. It is not unusual to have someone handle raw meat and then serve customers without changing gloves.

breda said :

What about all those suburban backyard barbecues? And don’t get me started on dinner parties … death traps, IMO. Unsuspecting guests are at risk, I tell you, AT RISK!

At any reasonably successful charity BBQ I can expect to serve 300 or more customers/potential victims. I doubt your backyard barbies are that popular.

The real risks are when exceptional circumstances occur. A slower rate of customers than expected and product can be sitting around for too long at the wrong temperature. Too many customers and things get rushed – meat is still frozen when used and then undercooked, utensils aren’t cleaned properly before reuse. By far the biggest risk is when someone decides to offer something a bit more fancy than the basic sausage on bread. Adding aioli or blue cheese on a steak sandwich is just looking for trouble.

breda said :

If doing it wrong is such a problem (of which there is zero evidence) – how come they get five opportunities to kill people before the All-Knowing State steps in?

Presumably because the Certificate III in Municipal Risk Management tells us that the first four deaths are OK.

i must say i thought about this post a lot yesterday….on the one hand, i too (like a lot of other posters) am sick of excess process when you try and do anything…but, on the other hand, i really think you have a solid point JB that these venues are serving food to people without any regulation, safety checks/certs or food safety training.

it may be a case of “user beware” when buying from a random charity BBQ (and i too have an iron gut and have never suffered after one)…but all food venues need to meet these regulations and the BBQs should also toe the line.

i have no issue with it if the point is to check and ensure proper food regulations/standards are being met…but if it’s fee-raising with no real outcome, then i think it’s a w***

to be honest, i’d never thought about it myself but i do think you have a good point 🙂

Katy Gallagher MLA retweeted:

Better Health @BetterHealthGov
[FOOD SAFETY TIP] Having a #bbq? Cook food to at least 75 °C to prevent #foodpoisoning

My two bobs worth – absolutely ludicrus crock of s***. If a person can’t cook a peice of meat (preferably from the butcher) then they really are farked!!

The big questions –

– who cooks the onion before the meat and why?
– preference either cook snags on grill or plate???

We could just add sausage cooking to the national curriculum; I’m surprised it is not already there given that BBQs are an iconic Strayan activity.

Anyone who serves an undercooked (i.e. not a blacked lump) sausage is obviously an illegal immigrant and should be sent to Manus Island to do their sausage cooking course.

I’ll continue to live life on the edge and eat non ACT governnment certified sausages….

Just the sorta guy I am…

Thug lyfe

Meanwhile, numerous food shop staff continue to handle money with their food safety gloves.

It’s a pointless exercise (the regulation). The certified person doesn’t even need to be at the cooking event. they just need to be contactable. How is that going to help if there is a problem? The certified person might be in Sydney (or Singapore) for the weekend, meanwhile the BBQ is at Scullin.

“Err Phil, it’s James here, we are at the Sports Centre cooking the sauages for the footy club and Mrs Jones ate a sausage that wasn’t cooked properly and is now lying on the ground writhing in agony. What should we do?”.

johnboy said :

Five times a year they get before they need to go learn what they’re doing.

They’re not inviting guests around, they’re selling a product.

If they do it lots then they need just one of them to go off and make sure they’re doing it right.

This is hardly onerous.

It can be in many organisations which rely on volunteers. I don’t think it will change anything though. Each club will find someone to go do the course. They may never be near a BBQ event, or ever get called up. The people cooking will have no idea either. As I said in an earlier post, providing either some simple checklists and a manual (download it in a PDF from online) and they need to be present at each BBQ, so if a person is unsure they can quickly look it up. That would actually do more than making someone from each club go do another “useless” course at clubs or own expense.

If doing it wrong is such a problem (of which there is zero evidence) – how come they get five opportunities to kill people before the All-Knowing State steps in?

No different from the usefulness of an RSA certificate.

johnboy said :

Five times a year they get before they need to go learn what they’re doing.

They’re not inviting guests around, they’re selling a product.

If they do it lots then they need just one of them to go off and make sure they’re doing it right.

This is hardly onerous.

Hm, let’s think about this. The regulation is each BBQ must have a food safety supervisor who is contactable during the BBQ (but without seeing the exact text of the proposed regs, doesn’t need to be the one doing food prep or even present). And they have to pay $150 to earn the title.

Which means the folks doing the cooking will be no wiser as to what they’re meant to be doing, nor will they necessarily be supervised by someone who is.

Here’s an idea, anyone who wishes to be involved in food service stalls must complete a series of free online modules detailing various aspects of food handling and preparation along with allergy awareness (a bit like the Road Ready course), and complete an online quiz which will deliver a random selection questions from a pool of possible questions at the end of it (again, like Road Ready). Do it in an evening, register then pick up a certificate from an ACT Shopfront for a token but small fee. If they don’t have a certificate, they can’t be involved in the service.

breda said :

And don’t get me started on dinner parties … death traps, IMO. Unsuspecting guests are at risk, I tell you, AT RISK!

Debbie: … How can we all have died at the *same* time?

Grim Reaper: [pointing] The salmon mousse!

What about all those suburban backyard barbecues? I think there is a real role for the ACT government here. I mean, thousands of people every year eating food that probably hasn’t been passed by someone with the appropriate certificate.

And don’t get me started on dinner parties … death traps, IMO. Unsuspecting guests are at risk, I tell you, AT RISK!

Something Should Be Done. By The Government. Before It’s Too Late.

joingler said :

If someone can point me to a report/statistics that shows food poisoning at such events is/was a problem in ACT then I will happily eat my words.

As long as the words are cooked by someone who is properly certified.

cmdwedge said :

What is this new regulation actually addressing? Give some examples of issues that have arisen (for instance, salmonella poisoning) from a charity BBQ.

I’ll be waiting.

This.

I can’t pass a sausage sizzle without buying a snag and I’ve never thought “This looks/tastes dodgy” or that the stall looked dirty. I fear a lot more for my health when I go into some KFCs or similar just after peak hour. Not to mention up-market cafes serving home-made mayo…

What is this new regulation actually addressing? Give some examples of issues that have arisen (for instance, salmonella poisoning) from a charity BBQ.

I’ll be waiting.

BimboGeek said :

$150 is cheaper than the 8 hour food safety supervisor course that has to be taken by one person (at least) in each commercial food handling business.

The requirements for temporary food stands are already ridiculously low, only a page or two.

In other jurisdictions everyone who works around food needs a basic food handlers certification. Food handling is a matter of simple guidelines anyone can follow but if you haven’t been told, how can you know? First, kitchens are disinfected at least daily, their grills meticulously scrubbed to as-new cleanliness with grill cleaner. Would you know how to do that? Sausages may certainly be not thrown out “at the end of the day” as suggested. Food must be kept under temperature control and when it has been outside of temperature control for 2 hpurs over its total lifetime, it will be thrown out before the clock reaches 4 hours. Do you know how to use a utensil soak and dedicated tools for different foods? Which coloured chopping board is for raw meat vs cooked? There is already a free food handlers’ course and everyone should be encouraged to complete it but the benefit of formal training is discussion, the opportunity to ask questions and get clarification, to benchmark against your colleagues… Plus of course training is somewhat more rigorous.

Responsible service of alcohol at community events is treated exactly the same way. You want th government to protect your health when you buy prepared food and they are taking some pretty minimal steps here. Food safety is no joke, as Madam Cholet can tell you (salmonella can seriously harm unborn babies and she must have been terrified.)

The relevant officials must be kept very busy ensuring compliance with these requirements by Canberra’s many commercial food handling businesses – I would guess (based purely on observation) that some such businesses don’t even know about it.

As someone who has done my fair share of volunteer work for these kinds of events, it might sound like $150 isn’t much, but most of the volunteers put more than their fare share of work into running a club, while the majority are quite happy to reap the benefits or are too busy to help.

Everytime a new regulation like this gets added on it puts a strain on the volunteer resources.
Here is an idea, surely a food safety manual and an online exam could be sent out for free to all clubs (or at least smaller clubs). Make it a requirement the manual is at all events, so anybody can read it if they are unsure. Or have some quick check lists as well. There are plenty or practical easy things that can be done to actually make an improvement.

The rule as stated does nothing, because i bet the person with the food safety knowledge would never get called and its the people working on the BBQ that need the info nearby.

FioBla said :

Safety course:

1. Put sausage in microwave.

2. If frozen, 4 minutes. If defrosted, 2 minutes.

Is that a beef sausage or a chicken sausage? A fresh sausage or a cured sausage? An 800w microwave or an 1100w microwave, or perhaps one of those notorious Panasonic models that overstates its wattage by 300w?

I don’t think these BBQ regulations are necessary, you need only look at the NSW Health Register to see how even the professionals get it wrong very often. So having one person pay up and do a token effort is unlikely in this context to do anything practical. But you kind of score an own goal with that example.

Safety course:

1. Put sausage in microwave.

2. If frozen, 4 minutes. If defrosted, 2 minutes.

Holden Caulfield said :

Using a sample size of exactly one, that being me, I have never had any problems with eating all sorts of garbage from volunteer/ charity sausage sizzles.

You have my consent to increase your sample size to two.

Make it three.

We need regulations governing the sizzling of sausages? Really?

Didn’t they recently introduce something similar governing cake stalls at school fetes?

johnboy said :

There’s going on half a million people in the region.
.

Nice Engrish JB!!

I think the number should be 6.

but essentially what is going to happen is the fundraising coordinator is going to do the training course when they enter the role.

If it’s the same group doing it every week in the same place/for the same group. They already have to have the qual.

Using a sample size of exactly one, that being me, I have never had any problems with eating all sorts of garbage from volunteer/ charity sausage sizzles.

You have my consent to increase your sample size to two.

BimboGeek said :

$150 is cheaper than the 8 hour food safety supervisor course that has to be taken by one person (at least) in each commercial food handling business.

It’s the same course.

Masquara said :

No doubt Katie Gallagher’s town council clerks were instructed to compensate for the loss of the Arboretum income tout de suite by hitting up Canberra’s most community-minded burghers.

So how exactly is the ACT Government going to make any money out of this? You get the certificate through a Registered Training Organisation by paying them the money not the Government, the ACT Government has to spend money on compliance but doesn’t collect anything in return.

I suspect the issue isn’t the risk of people getting sick from eating a dodgy sausage, it’s the risk of people with lawyers claiming to have suffered from eating a sausage.

Pyga operias.

Known fact….

Women love sausages, no matter the size… (and so do some men)…

I’d be less worried about the organisation that does 5 or more of these a year than the places which do a one off for fund raising. I had some undercooked sausages at Sfoglia a few months ago. I could taste they were not fully cooked, but I still ate them. I didn’t fall ill, but I wonder why I did that.

Where’s the evidence sausage sizzles are harmful to human health? There’s risk and there’s risk. I wonder if they’ll pay an inspector overtime to work Saturdays to visit footy clubs etc? As usual more questions than answers arise when our Health Protection service intervenes on our behalf ….

The offerings from those charity BBQs often smell better than they taste, so I usually manage to resist the urge – still, I would be much less worried about the risks from an uncertificated BBQ than from iatrogenesis at one of our peerless and heavily regulated public health institutions.

breda said :

The trouble with your thesis, JB, is that the person with the “food safety training” is not even required to be on site. They just have to be “contactable”,whatever that means. So, presumably if people start keeling over and throwing up, you call the person with the certificate? Right.

In a lifetime of eating charity sausage sandwiches, I have never had so much as a tummy rumble. Indeed, in the CT article the govvie spokesperson, when asked, could not cite a single case of food poisoning that could be traced back to a charity sausage sizzle. Hardly a “clear and present danger”, then.

These people will not be satisfied until we need the government’s permission to sneeze.

No doubt Katie Gallagher’s town council clerks were instructed to compensate for the loss of the Arboretum income toute de suite by hitting up Canberra’s most community-minded burghers.

$150 is cheaper than the 8 hour food safety supervisor course that has to be taken by one person (at least) in each commercial food handling business.

The requirements for temporary food stands are already ridiculously low, only a page or two.

In other jurisdictions everyone who works around food needs a basic food handlers certification. Food handling is a matter of simple guidelines anyone can follow but if you haven’t been told, how can you know? First, kitchens are disinfected at least daily, their grills meticulously scrubbed to as-new cleanliness with grill cleaner. Would you know how to do that? Sausages may certainly be not thrown out “at the end of the day” as suggested. Food must be kept under temperature control and when it has been outside of temperature control for 2 hpurs over its total lifetime, it will be thrown out before the clock reaches 4 hours. Do you know how to use a utensil soak and dedicated tools for different foods? Which coloured chopping board is for raw meat vs cooked? There is already a free food handlers’ course and everyone should be encouraged to complete it but the benefit of formal training is discussion, the opportunity to ask questions and get clarification, to benchmark against your colleagues… Plus of course training is somewhat more rigorous.

Responsible service of alcohol at community events is treated exactly the same way. You want th government to protect your health when you buy prepared food and they are taking some pretty minimal steps here. Food safety is no joke, as Madam Cholet can tell you (salmonella can seriously harm unborn babies and she must have been terrified.)

Any non Queenslander would agree that we need less government interference in our Iives, not more…

I am in agreement with CT on this one.

In August I was required to do the food safety supervisor course for work. Although I can understand having to do it, I did not learn anything there. You have 2-3 hours of being told to wear gloves, wash hands regularly how to properly defrost/cook food.

Forcing small not-for-profit organisations to have someone to do this course is just ridiculous.

If someone can point me to a report/statistics that shows food poisoning at such events is/was a problem in ACT then I will happily eat my words.

The trouble with your thesis, JB, is that the person with the “food safety training” is not even required to be on site. They just have to be “contactable”,whatever that means. So, presumably if people start keeling over and throwing up, you call the person with the certificate? Right.

In a lifetime of eating charity sausage sandwiches, I have never had so much as a tummy rumble. Indeed, in the CT article the govvie spokesperson, when asked, could not cite a single case of food poisoning that could be traced back to a charity sausage sizzle. Hardly a “clear and present danger”, then.

These people will not be satisfied until we need the government’s permission to sneeze.

Here’s the problem. Government doesn’t do something, someone gets sick people complain the government didn’t do enough. They do something, people complain too much regulation.

Frankly reading the ‘regulation’ you need to hold more than 4 or 5 events in a year to need this, and only then do you need 1 person trained at a cost of $150. That person doesn’t even need to be on site just on the phone.

Sound pretty reasonable for the vast majority of charities, they either won’t do them enough to need a trained person or will do it often enough (say sporting venues who do it every week) that $150 is not so bad.

Also was thinking wonder why with BBQ’s at Bunnings etc the trained person couldn’t be a member of staff, rather than the actual charity. After all they provide more or less everything else in support, so would make perfect sense.

Yep and every single bit of extra regulation in the Australian way of life just adds to cost of living. We have just had swimming pools now requiring registration in NSW. We now have BBQs now lets have a guess at whats next maybe they will regulated what food can be purchased in different check out coounters. Oh yea thats right they are doing that s well. Dont be fooled each added bit of regulation adds up over time.

In the last 20 years ive worked all over the world and have been to between 50 and 100 countries I cant be bothered working it out and i kid you not Australia is one of the most over regulated countries on Earth. Our cost of living is way more then it should be and it used to be a lot cheaper living in Australian then the UK. Well not any more I know quiet a few people that work in my industry that have moved back to the UK from Australia because of the costs. And in this job we can live anywhere in the world and they chose to move to Australia but things have changed now.

Finally a licence to cook, why so expensive?
If government funded a bbq health course wouldn’t that actually improve the waiting times at the hospital..
I’ve done many bbq’s for the masses its not that hard to tell people the snags aren’t done.
Its poor form to undertook a free bbq, its a crime to do it when your selling the snags.

Unlike the risks in a dirty kitchen, sausages served sizzling hot on the day, with leftovers disposed of, again, on the day, would be very unlikely to pose a food poisoning hazard. Surely $20 should cover a certificate, with an online course.

If the Multicultural Festival gets regulated for a one-off event, I don’t see why community groups peddling sausages outside Bunnings shouldn’t either.

This might come in handy for the group which was at Bunnings Tuggers last week. Had about 50 people working the stall and yet they still could not produce barely a sausage. And when it did arrive, it was probably slightly underdone. Having had salmonella once whilst pregnant, it’s not an experience I wish to repeat. It might seem a trivial matter – cooking a few snags using a trusty old barbie whilst having enormous fun at the same time to raise some money, but yes, in this day and age it’s probably odd that they have not yet had some kind of regulation slapped over them.