Boas práticas de fabricação de alimentos em tempo de pandemia: Elaboração e aplicação de check list para mitigar a disseminação da covid-19 em serviços de alimentação

Abstract

The health crisis, generated by the Covid-19 pandemic, has drastically affected the global economy, as; it has restricted the movement of people and the functioning of various commercial activities. Food services, even with restrictions, were allowed to remain operational because they are considered essential activities. However, they had to adapt to the new operating protocol, created through regulations published by the Federal and State Governments, in order to mitigate the chances of contamination by Covid-19. The objective of this research was to gather these regulations and compile the guidelines in a Checklist of Good Practices of Food Manufacturing, which using as reference and model the Check List attached to RDC-216, of September 215, 2004, not only help establishments to adapt to the new operating protocol, but also favors the strengthening of Good Manufacturing Practices. The Checklist was made available to the Technical Officers of the participating FNUs through the Google Forms platform; they applied the Checklist and forwarded the results to the researchers. After data analysis, it was found that all participating FNUs (100%) claimed to have a GMP Manual, however, the research reveals that there are discrepancies between what the legislation determines, and what the FNUs perform. After all, while 100% of the FNUs claim to provide gel alcohol; and instruct employees on how to prevent Covid-19, only 33.3% of them perform screening and temperature measurement upon arrival at work, demonstrating that there is a predisposition to some topics, others being discovered. Thus, the relevance of this study is to make available to entrepreneurs in the food service segment, so penalized during this pandemic, a practical, inexpensive, and easy way to adapt to the legislation, called the Checklist, because it gathers the guidelines that are premises for the continuity of the operations of the establishment.