To cook well goes hand-in-glove with how hygienically conditions are maintained onboard. Our staff is trained as per the Food Safety, general food hygiene regulations of 1995.

GSS provides a checklist and guidelines to joining staff to insure that all recommended hygiene, food safety, ILO health guidelines and MARPOL garbage disposal rules are strictly adhered to onboard. To ensure that all hygienic standards are adhered to, the ship Captain on behalf of GSS, carries out a hygiene and food safety inspection every week. This report is sent to GSS for review. Our roving catering auditors immediately respond to any lapses and visit the concerned vessel to take corrective action if required.

Besides the routine audits by the master on behalf of GSS; the GSS roving catering superintendents also conduct surprise hygiene and food safety audits onboard vessels. We follow strict hygiene, food safety and health standards and do not tolerate any lapses on that count by any of our staff.

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At GSS we know that from 1st January 2006, all food establishments, including catering operations, will be required by EU Law to operate food safety management procedures based on the HACCP principles, including appropriate documentation and record keeping and the need to verify that HACCP procedures are working efficiently.

Thus GSS is benchmarking to apply for this certification and have already started implementing the principles of Hazard Analysis and points identification for steps critical to food safety in our shore and ship board operations. Most of the milestones have already been covered.

Our approach is based on the following principles which are:

• Analysis of the potential hazards in a food operation
   

• Identification of the points in the food operation where food hazards may occur and determine critical control points.
   

• Deciding on which of the points identified are critical to ensuring food safety and establish critical limits.
   

• Identification and implementation of effective control and monitoring procedures at the critical points
   

• Establish corrective actions required when monitoring indicates that a particular control point exceeds critical limits or not under control.
   

• Review of the above points periodically and wherever the food operations changes, and establish procedures for verification that the hazard analysis and critical control point (haccp) system is working efficiently.
   

• Establish documentation concerning all proceedures and records appropriate to HACCP and it’s applications.