Your duties as an individual
The Code places obligations directly on the person handling food, not only on the business employing them. They come down to four things: don't contaminate the food, tell someone when you're a risk, keep yourself clean, and wash your hands at the right moments.
- Take all practicable measures to prevent contaminating food — including not sneezing, coughing, blowing or spitting over food
- Tell your supervisor if you have, or suspect you have, a foodborne illness, or if you are suffering from symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhoea, fever or a sore throat with fever
- Report any condition that could contaminate food, including infected skin lesions and discharges from the ear, nose or eyes
- Keep any bandage or dressing on an exposed part of your body completely covered with a waterproof covering
- Wear clean outer clothing and keep yourself clean
- Wash your hands whenever hands are likely to be a source of contamination — before handling ready-to-eat food, after using the toilet, after handling raw food, after smoking, coughing, sneezing or eating
- Take all practicable measures to prevent unnecessary contact with ready-to-eat food
This comes up on the test — and the training that covers it is free to read.
Start the Free TrainingWhat the business has to do
The food business carries the heavier legal load. It has to ensure its food handlers have the skills and knowledge in food safety and food hygiene appropriate to their work, provide handwashing facilities with warm running water, soap and a hygienic means of drying hands, and make sure people who are ill do not handle food.
That skills-and-knowledge duty is the reason food handler training exists and the reason employers ask about it. The Code doesn't prescribe how it must be met — training, supervision and experience can all count — which is why there is no single mandatory certificate for every worker in Australia.
Where the rules come from
Standard 3.2.2 (Food Safety Practices and General Requirements) sits inside the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code, developed by Food Standards Australia New Zealand and given legal force through each state and territory's own Food Act. Enforcement is local: your state regulator and your council are the ones who actually inspect premises.
Standard 3.2.2A, phased in more recently, adds specific requirements for many retail and food service businesses — including food safety supervisor and food handler training elements. That standard applies to the business, and its supervisor element is a separate qualification from a food handler certificate.