Dealing with allergens as a manager

Have you ever gone to a food service facility and noticed practices
that don't align with proper handling of food to avoid cross
contamination? This can cause a problem for people in those facilities
dining with food allergies. A study in New Zealand aimed to determine
how many of the restaurant and cafe managers in one city were
familiar with food allergens, had practices to avoid cross
contamination, and how confident the manager was in dealing with a
situation when it arose. 124 cafes and restaurants had managers or
owners that participated, and many of them were able to identify the
big 8 allergens, with peanuts being the most recognized food as an
allergen source. While only 25% of them were actually trained in food
allergies, this quarter of those surveyed were the most likely to have
a plan in place for dealing with patrons with allergens and emergency
situations such as a patron going into anaphylactic shock. Other large
differences included managers versus owners, which showed that owners
were more interested in further training, and managers that belonged
to an industry versus managers that did not, which showed that
industry managers were more likely to keep ingredient information on
hand and were more likely to have an interest in training for allergen
preparation.
This is an arising problem in our economy and could be an excellent
place for a dietitian to start stepping into the restaurant industry
to train the industry on allergen safe food handling.

Wham, C., & Sharma, K. (2014). Knowledge of café and restaurant
managers to provide a safe meal to food allergic consumers. Nutrition
And Dietetics, 71(4), 265-269. doi:10.1111/1747-0080.12104

-SB