Kitchen gloves are small pieces of hygiene and safety equipment. However, these small wonders play a vital role in the food industry.
Though many are unaware of their usefulness in health and safety, highlighting few uses will help the food industry strengthen their goals day to day, as well as ensure compliance and the success of their business.
Let’s check on the five primary uses of disposable kitchen gloves.
-
Food Safety
Food safety is among the significant reasons the food industry encourages the use of disposable kitchen gloves during food preparation. This practice is an effective measure that a food handler could prevent unnecessary and direct contact with raw and cooked foods.
The practice of wearing gloves by food handlers prevents food contamination. This prevents the transfer of undesirable elements, such as chemicals or pathogenic microorganisms, into the food product.
-
Cleanliness
When there is cleanliness, there is a small chance for food contamination.
The Australian food industry promotes using kitchen gloves to ensure that the foods prepared are extremely clean. Food handlers no longer need to wash their hands every time they handle food. Instead, they only need to wash and dry their hands thoroughly before slipping on a pair of gloves and going on with their work.
But changing gloves regularly is advised. This practice is also applicable when they are tasked to handle the preparation of various types of foods. Doing this ensures that the ingredients and elements of one food will not be transferred or contaminate the others.
-
Protection
Wearing disposable kitchen gloves is proven to protect food industry workers by preventing direct contact with food chemicals that can cause skin irritations. Cleaning solutions contain harsh compounds that can irritate the skin.
Relatively, gloves protect the skin from sores and cuts due to the hazards in the food processing environment. This includes sharp-edged tools, equipment that works with extremely high temperatures, harsh sanitising solutions and chemicals.
Ultimately, disposable kitchen gloves serve as a protective shield against pathogenic microorganisms they might be exposed to when working with raw meat, seafood, animal carcasses or poultry.
-
Convenience
Many food industry workers consider wearing disposable kitchen gloves as an effective way to make their jobs more convenient. This is because they don’t need to wash their hands thoroughly from time to time.
Food handlers also find wearing kitchen gloves as a convenient way to make the handling of messy food types and sticky ingredients easier. So, instead of having a hard time working on the said food elements, most of them can finish various food handling procedures, such as tossing a salad or making burger patties, with utmost ease.
-
Compliance
Compliance in the food industry is an imperative undertaking, making the wearing of disposable kitchen gloves a must.
The Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code requires food handlers with cuts on their hand or wearing a bandage to wear gloves at work. Also, the bare hand contact of ready-to-eat foods is strongly discouraged by health experts to avoid harmful and unhygienic contamination.
Things to Consider When Looking for Disposable Kitchen Gloves
The procurement of kitchen gloves is a sensitive decision making. The staff or those in charge of the said logistics should handle the selection of gloves correctly. Otherwise, it will only nullify the purpose of excellent quality disposable kitchen gloves when the product chosen is substandard.
We should look into four essential aspects when choosing the right gloves.
-
Material
The material of disposable kitchen gloves often becomes a dispute. Disposable gloves can be latex, vinyl or nitrile. Having deep discernment of the usefulness or harmfulness of these materials in gloves will help you decide which one will suit your requirement and at the same time contribute to the wellness of our environment.
This will help you narrow down the potential options and make the selection more convenient. You can find compostable gloves and other bio products in Australia that are environmentally safe.
-
Safety
One of the main reasons the wearing of gloves in the food industry is strongly encouraged is to protect the workers’ hands when doing this work. The level of protection should be included as an essential factor to consider when shopping for the best gloves to use.
-
Availability
The fast food industry, compared to restaurants and other types of food chain, produces food in a fast-paced environment, thereby requiring more disposable gloves in the kitchen. Therefore, it is important for them to source gloves from suppliers that are capable of supplying them constantly.
-
Price
The prices of the available product options should also be considered when shopping for the best disposable kitchen gloves to use. Instead of going for the products that are sold at lower prices, it is best to prioritise those that are competitively priced.
Generally, the gloves offered at lower prices fall short when it comes to quality. Usually, cheaper variants are not durable enough to meet the challenging demand of the food industry. Most of the low-priced gloves are not compostable and eco-friendly.
The price difference of compostable kitchen gloves is typically compensated by their enhanced durability and biodegradability.
