Category one or category two?

Category one (clause 6) is a caterer or food service business that processes unpackaged potentially hazardous food into food that is both potentially hazardous and ready to eat.

Category two (clause 7) is a retailer of potentially hazardous, ready to eat food that it received or unpacked but did not make or process itself. Handling limited to slicing, weighing, repacking, reheating or hot holding keeps a retailer in category two.

A business that does both is classed by its higher risk activity, which makes it category one.

• Food safety supervisor (clause 11): both categories.
• Food handler training (clause 10): both categories.
• Evidence tool, records or demonstration (clause 12): category one only.

Nearly every hospitality kitchen is category one. WA Health's guide names restaurants, cafés, takeaway shops, caterers, bakeries, mobile vendors, hospitals and childcare centres as category one examples.

Category two is mostly retail: a service station selling pies from a warmer, or a shop selling sandwiches made by someone else.

Fundraising events are exempt from the standard (clause 3(2)).

These questions give a likely answer. They are not a ruling.

• Do you handle food that needs temperature control and is eaten without further cooking? If not, the standard may not reach you at all.
• Is that food unpackaged when you handle it?
• Do you make or process it yourself, for example by cooking or assembling it? If so, you are likely category one. Slicing, weighing, repacking, reheating or hot holding food that someone else made does not by itself make a retailer category one.
• If you only sell food someone else made, and at most slice, weigh, repack, reheat or hot hold it, you are likely category two.

Your category can change. A deli that starts making sandwiches moves from category two to category one and picks up clause 12.