Food Safety
How to get your business ready for the reality of
COVID-19?
Download the FREE handbook with ideas, recommendations and guidance on how you can adapt your bakery, pastry, restaurant or sweet business to get through the COVID-19 storm. The handbook will be updated regularly – based on new insights and the changing business reality.
Keeping your business up and running, and organizing that in a safe way is not easy. Below we bundle frequently asked questions and a few recommendation and best practices that might help you in organizing it in a safe way!
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ANSWERS
As chocolate maker and artisans together, we have a social responsibility to continue producing the foods we all love. From our side, we have put precautionary measures in place to guarantee absolute safety of all our products. In many cases, these measures go beyond the requirements of governments and local authorities, to provide safe environments to work, protect the communities and help our people who are the heart of our operations.
Our focus is on doing our utmost to continue supporting all customer demands, whilst navigating through challenging times and difficult realities. Through transparent communication and close collaboration we will support you in finding solutions and opportunities.
Please get in touch with your Callebaut contact, should you require any assistance.
We have dedicated issue teams at global and regional level who monitor the situation as it develops and will adjust any measures or actions based on the guidance of the World Health Organization, CDC, governments and other relevant authorities.
We look forward to helping you in doing business un-usual.
We recommend checking the websites of your local authorities linked to the Corona crisis. For food businesses, many authorities have issued specific guidelines that help you in taking precautionary measures.
We list the most important ones:
• Apply strict hand hygiene: wash hands every 15 minutes.
• Thorough hand washing with normal soap makes corona viruses practically completely harmless. Hand disinfectants may even be less effective than soap and water. They are useful when hygienic hand washing is not possible. The disinfectant should at least 60 contain alcohol percent.
• When possible and available: ask your staff to wear disposable gloves and mouth masks at work.
• Ask your team to avoid touching the mouth, nose and eyes with their hands. This is considered the most important and effective precaution.
• Clean working surfaces, appliances and/or equipment after use – preferably using alcohol to avoid contamination.
• For incoming goods in cardboard boxes and plastic packaging: there is nothing to be said against wiping goods packaging with a damp cloth and with cleaning liquid or alcohol. Disposing of the packaging safely and immediately (out of the storage – away from production) is also recommended. According to experts, washing hands thoroughly after handling them is currently sufficient. If you want to be absolutely sure, you can, if possible, leave your purchased goods untouched for a few days.
• Apply social distancing: make sure your staff can work with 1.5 meter at least between the working stations.
• Fit your team to the available surface: minimal teams in regular shifts can help to keep your teams motivated and everyone active and safe at the same time. In between change of shifts, avoiding contact between incoming and outgoing staff is a best practice.
• Inform your staff it’s key to stay at home when they feel ill or show symptoms of a cold, fever….
In the course of the generally increased hygiene, there is nothing to be said against wiping goods packaging with a damp cloth and with cleaning liquid. Disposing of the packaging safely immediately is also recommended. According to experts, washing hands thoroughly after handling them is currently sufficient. If you want to be absolutely sure, you can, if possible, leave your purchased goods untouched for a few days.
• Hold hands under running water. The temperature does not matter.
• Soap thoroughly – it must foam well – at least until your wrist. Do not forget the spaces between fingers and the back of your hands. Pay special attention to fingertips and nails.
• 20 seconds of thorough rubbing is the minimum.
• Rinse well with running water.
• If possible, do not use your hand to close the tap, but rather your elbow or a paper towel or tissue.
• Dry thoroughly with disposable towels. Air dryers are less suitable.
• Wear a new set of disposable gloves after hand washing.
The entire world is faced with the impact of the Corona pandemic. To protect the vulnerable communities in the cocoa growing regions as well, our company is taking initiatives – in close partnership with local authorities – to grow community awareness and sensitization on preventing the virus to spread.
In compliance with the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, local regulations and government directives on COVID-19, we have halted all activities that require unnecessary movements or gatherings from our teams in the field.
We also reorganized our teams to inform and sensitize farmer communities, and protect at-risk communities who are already struggling in these areas. To do so, we have committed to:
- Distribute official WHO posters with COVID-19 protective instructions to farmer groups, via local coaches.
- Sensitize farmers on the risk of COVID-19, and provide each family with soap, via local coaches while interacting for official purposes.
- Support governmental dissemination of evolving and urgent information to remote communities, via our coaching networks.
Discover all actions we are taking in the field here, in collaboration with Cocoa Horizons, WHO and local authorities.
