Bußgelder wegen Verstößen gegen Temperaturkontrolle und HACCP-Dokumentation

Definition

Australian food safety regulation requires caterers to strictly control and document food temperatures. Standard 3.2.2 of the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code mandates that potentially hazardous food be stored, displayed and transported at or below 5°C for cold food and at or above 60°C for hot food, with additional rules for cooling and reheating.[2][3][5] Standard 3.2.2A further requires certain businesses (including many caterers) to keep food safety records such as receipt temperatures and times for at least three months to demonstrate compliance in investigations and audits.[4] State authorities (e.g. NSW Food Authority, QLD Health) emphasise that temperature control and corresponding records are mandatory, and that failure can result in unfavourable health checks, significant penalties and, in severe cases, immediate administrative closure of the business.[2][3] Non‑compliance typically also triggers destruction of affected food batches as a precaution, which is a direct cost. Because explicit national penalty tariffs are not in the provided sources, a logic‑based estimate is used: local council and state food safety infringement notices for serious food safety breaches commonly range from roughly AUD 1,000–10,000 per incident for SMEs, and closure of operations for several days can easily cost a busy catering business AUD 10,000–40,000 in lost gross profit and staff idle time. Adding product disposal (often hundreds to thousands of dollars per event), a realistic loss band per serious temperature/HACCP documentation failure is AUD 5,000–50,000.

Why This Matters

The Pitch: Catering operators in Australia 🇦🇺 waste AUD 5,000–50,000+ annually on fines, enforced food disposal, and emergency corrective actions caused by manual temperature logging and patchy HACCP records. Automation of continuous temperature monitoring and digital record‑keeping eliminates most of this compliance risk.

Affected Stakeholders

Catering business owners, Food safety managers, Head chefs, Operations managers, Compliance/QA officers

Related Business Risks