Astral Hygiene Blog | Commercial Cleaning & Hygiene Advice UK

  How to set up your Hygiene when running or opening an abattoir…  28th February 2025  | By Anna Armstrong   |  Cleaning Tips ,  Environmental Health ,  Hygiene I was recently engaged to set up the cleaning & hygiene practices in a newly established abattoir. This was a newly built project, and the client had engaged a health and safety team, and a consultancy to design the building, ensuring sinks etc were all in place. At the final stages when the build was almost complete, I was engaged to ensure that all cleaning and hygiene practices met the standards that were required by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) who are responsible for inspection of the hygiene standards but also the inspection of the environmental impact of an abattoir. I arrived on site, to do a site audit, and take the brief in terms of what meats they would be processing, to find that we were starting from the ground up, there were no chemicals onsite and we had a single qualified...

  Environmental Health Assessment: Fish Processing Plant case study  7th March 2025 I was recently engaged by a start up firm who had plans to begin processing a specific type of fish and then selling it on their website. This fish was line caught, so sustainably caught and the client wanted to process this fish in new premises. The client had no previous experience with processing raw foods, so needed comprehensive guidance prior to a scheduled environmental health assessment to allow him to open and begin trading. After finding out about his vision and what he wanted to achieve from our meeting, I firstly began with the PPE requirements needed on site to ensure that contaminants from outside weren’t being brought in to the factory. I provided  mob caps  which are food safe and comfortable to wear,  overshoes  were also delivered, as shoe protection.  Waterproof aprons  completed the ensemble. Finally, we provided nitrile gloves as hand protectio...

  Part 2 - Environmental Health - Are you doing it right?  23rd May 2024  | By Anna Armstrong   |  Environmental Health To follow on from what we learned about visits from your Environmental Health Officer; how they are not the mortal enemy, more a source of knowledge and experience to make sure you are maintaining your hygiene by taking the right approach; we will be talking about how your EHO wants you to wash your dishes. The last time I blogged about the benefits of a colour coding system, and how having all areas assigned a colour ensures  clarity in terms of which mop is to be used where just makes maintaining hygiene standards a lot easier.  Just recapping really quickly these are the colours and the zones which they should be attributed to.   This blog is about an equally important and quite a contentious issue how to wash your dishes the correct way (yes there is a correct way)!  Simple right? Well no it’s not really that simple so p...

  Part 3 - How to prepare for your Environmental Health Inspection - Sanitisers....  23rd May 2024  | By Anna Armstrong   |  Environmental Health To follow on from our tour of colour coding and the lessons learned about washing a dish the correct way in this blog I’ll be talking about sanitisers...for both food safe and COVID safe! Sanitise your surfaces properly While I’m going through the sanitisation section, it is so important to get the dish washing correct, but it’s also important to ensure that the surfaces you are touching and putting your freshly sanitised dishes on are clean and sanitised.  Your surfaces need to be sanitised as part of your regular cleaning regime, but also between raw and cooked food preparation.  It is vital again that you are using a two stage process to clean your surfaces; Stage 1: General cleaning using a detergent.   This involves the physical removal of visible grease, dirt and food particles from surfaces a...

  Part 4 - Preparing for your EHO Visit  23rd May 2024  | By Anna Armstrong Your environmental health officer will want to see a separate sink for hand washing. Soap...Sanitisers.... Soap with Sanitisers..... Provide a dedicated handwashing basin with an appropriate water supply, soap and hygienic hand-drying facilities. Effective handwashing with soap and water is essential; it does not sterilise your hands. Wash hands before handling food and after touching raw meat, poultry, fish, eggs or unwashed vegetables, as well as after toilet visits and handling waste. Follow FSA handwashing guidance . Antibacterial soap is not a substitute for good handwashing technique. At Astral we sell a wide range of soaps, but choose a suitable hand soap and follow your food-safety procedures.  We stock the  Gojo Anti-microbial soap , which comes out of a  specific dispenser  which is mounted on the wall.  We also have  500ml pump top soaps  which are sma...

  Part 5 - Environmental Health  23rd May 2024  | By Anna Armstrong   |  Cleaning Tips ,  Environmental Health ,  Hygiene ,  Sustainability ,  Coronovirus You were probably taught at an early age that first impressions were really key in terms of setting up the relationship to set you up for success. If you are laying the foundations incorrectly resulting in a tumultuous relationship with your EHO - you're starting off on the back foot. So let’s get right into it then…….. There is a place for common sense..... Using your common sense when it comes to your EHO visit will really help to build a good relationship with your EHO.  Keep walk ways clear, keep floors clean and dry, keep slip hazards non-existent, make sure your kitchen floors are free of grease and slippery substances by using a good degreasing  chemical floor cleaner .  Make sure that everything looks tidy, and has the appearance of clean.  Make sure your raw and...

  How to prepare for your Environmental Health Inspection  20th May 2024  | By Anna Armstrong   |  Environmental Health This is such a massive topic I’ve decided to spit it into five separate blogs which will be released over the next five weeks. We all know that Food Handling Operators are regularly inspected by the Environmental Health, and for a lot of you out there, the thought of an Environmental Health Inspection can be so terrifying it can make you a little nervous. This blog is meant to alleviate some of that fear, and to let you know that Environmental Health are there to make sure the food you are serving is safe, well cooked, prepared hygienically and most importantly is not contaminated with E-Coli or any other nasty micro-organisms which will make your customers ill! The first point I’d like to make is that Environmental Health will almost never arrive at your premises and ‘shut you down’ unless you are behaving totally unreasonably, and have vermin...

  Cross Contamination ... how to avoid it!  15th October 2021  | By Anna Armstrong What is cross contamination? Making a kitchen look clean by removal of crumbs and smears is easy, but this does not  mean that your kitchen is not contaminated by life threatening bacteria like E-coli and MRSA.  So how clean is your kitchen, is it tidy but contaminated with bacteria?   Cross contamination is the easiest and most common way in which people get food poisoning. Cross contamination is effectively bacteria being put on to surfaces, and being picked up and contaminating food.  If a piece of equipment isn't handled correctly, cross contamination can easily occur, and can infect food and can make customers very unwell.  If you are not educated enough and aren't making enough of an effort to avoid cross contamination E.Coli can spread, grow and multiply and this is one of the most deadly bacteria you can find in your kitchen. The spread of E.Coli can no...