Standard 3.2.2A explained for WA venues

Standard 3.2.2A, Food Safety Management Tools, started on 8 December 2023 on one date across Australia. There was no staged rollout by size or type of business. It adds to Standard 3.2.2 and Standard 3.2.3 rather than replacing them, so the existing rules on temperatures, cleaning and premises still apply in full.

• Food safety supervisor (clause 11). Appointed before the business carries out a prescribed activity, and reasonably available to advise and supervise while it happens. Their certificate must have been issued within the previous five years.
• Food handler training (clause 10). Before they first carry out a prescribed activity, every food handler has either completed a food safety training course or has skills and knowledge that match the work.
• Substantiation, often called the evidence tool (clause 12). A category one business makes and keeps records for the prescribed provisions it carries out, or demonstrates to the reasonable satisfaction of an authorised officer that it meets them.

Records made under clause 12 are kept for three months from the date each one was made (clause 12(2)). Three months is a minimum, not a limit.

In Western Australia, regulation 7 of the Food Regulations 2009 (WA), made under the Food Act 2008 (WA), adopts the Code as in force from time to time, and the Act makes failing to comply with it an offence. A change to the Code therefore applies in WA without any separate state amendment.

The standard reaches food service businesses, caterers and some retailers that handle unpackaged potentially hazardous food that is ready to eat. Which tools apply depends on the business's category.

Category one covers businesses that make that food themselves. WA Health's guide gives restaurants, cafés, takeaway shops, caterers, bakeries, mobile vendors, hospitals and childcare centres as examples. Category two covers retailers that sell such food without making it, such as a shop that only slices, weighs, repacks, reheats or hot holds food it bought in.

Fundraising events are exempt (clause 3(2)).

In a typical café it looks like this: one or more named supervisors with a current certificate, a short induction for each new starter before their first shift in prep or on the pass, and the habit of recording fridge temperatures, deliveries and cleaning.

Clause 12(4) lists nine prescribed provisions. For each one you carry out, a category one business keeps a record or can show the officer another way:

• receiving potentially hazardous food
• storing it
• cooking or another step that reduces pathogens
• keeping time out of temperature control short, including thawing
• cooling cooked food
• reheating food to hold it hot
• displaying it
• transporting it
• cleaning and sanitising

A provision only matters if you do the activity. A kitchen that cooks to order and throws out leftovers has nothing to record for cooling or reheating.

No form is prescribed. Paper sheets, an app, annotated invoices, data logger graphs and photographs are all acceptable. Records must be available to an authorised officer at the premises whenever the business is operating.