Who here has, or had, a food hander’s card and why?
I had an Oregon card for many years to work in Hospitality at various Oregon science diction conventions, and I just got a Washington card a half-hour ago to work in Hospitality at Norwescon in Seattle.
You?
My wife briefly owned a coffee shop, so she and I got our (Ontario) food handlers’ certificates. All I really remember about the seminar was putting a substance on our hands that went from clear to red-coloured so that we could see how effective we were at hand-washing (the red splotches showing the areas we missed).
I had one decades ago when I worked in fast food. Long expired. Was easy to get. My parents had to get one about a decade ago and had to attend training. Theirs are still valid, or at least my dad’s should be, since he’s still cooking.
Our village association, which I am on the board of, is hoping to become a local “resilience hub,” though I think our population is so small (around 400) that there may not be enough momentum.
If there is, however, we’ll be eligible for a free community food dehydrator after a few people get certified in food safety and operating the dehydrator. I shall be first in line for that training if we can pull it off.
I’ve never had a card, but i got certification a couple of years ago, when it was required to volunteer to cook for my temple’s meals on wheels program.
An online course plus a test. The whole thing took less than 2 hours, including figluring our what i needed to do.
I had the certification a really long time ago.
How long ago was it?
Well, children, it was so long ago it was for a restaurant called Arthur Treacher’s, that was located in a mall.
I have my Illinois food, handlers card, and my serve safe manager certification.
I have also held various other states food handler certificate… I’ve been in the restaurant/hospitality industry for about 50 years… As of today, I am officially semi retired.
Hm, I don’t think that Ohio nor Pennsylvania has such a thing. I’ve worked food service in Pennsylvania, and know lots of people doing so in Ohio, and it never came up.
I had to get one in the late 90’s for my first job at a Subway sandwich shop. It cost like $150 in… I was working there when the New Carissa wrecked so it was sometime in the winter of 1998/1999. I had to attend an all-day class, at the end of the day take a test, and ~3 weeks later I got a letter in the mail saying I passed the class. There was a little wallet card too IIRC. All I remember about the class was that the instructor was self-important woman in a pantsuit and that it was so incredibly boring.
Both of my sons had to have one for their first jobs, both at McDonalds. Ca. 2021 and 2023. They signed up online, paid $10, watched an hour or so of videos, took a test, and then printed out their card. Easy-peasy. Much less onerous – and exponentially cheaper – than what I had to do.
All 3 were in Oregon.
I hear about such things, but my experience as a prep cook in the late 80s and early 90s in Indiana and Virginia was absent any such paperwork.
I know someone who has a degree from the Culinary Institute of America, which is accredited, and they ran a restaurant.
Both of them have official Food Handler Cards.
But they’re not required for all workers. Ohio requires the card for the person responsible for food safety overall and Pennsylvania doesn’t require it at all.
Louisiana (amazingly, for how much of a food scene there is in New Orleans) does not have a state-enforced food-handler certificate or anything like that. Food handling certification is sometimes (not always) enforced at the level of the individual business or institution and when this is the case, the test is much like you describe.