in that scenario the cooking area is high care , i did not say only cooking area is high care
I appreciate that but I was just trying to clear up the confusion. BRC have been quite clear on this and this matches the chilled food association standards and definitions UK chilled food industry has been working to for decades.
High risk = an area where fully cooked products are made which is physically segregated. Everything is cooked into that area or undergoes a process which ensures they have very low micro counts. The products in this area are vulnerable to bacterial growth and are either chilled or frozen and often contain high Aw and protein contents.
High care = an area where things are segregated as much as possible (high risk style controls should be achieved where possible) but the big difference is not everything is cooked into that area but some kind of decontamination to reduce micro loadings is put in place. Typical examples include salads for sandwiches being washed into an area. You'd have to be very careful about controls in a place like this because the processes for reducing micro loading are not absolute. For example, I would be very wary of having raw meat intake in the same area as raw vegetable intake if those vegetables are simply washed into your high care room as cross contamination could result in a major issue.
Low risk area is an area where the product itself does not encourage micro growth or there's a stage later which will reduce the micro growth. That's why steps 1-3 are low risk and step 4 probably is if there are segregation controls as I indicated above.
So as I've explained it above, your answer gets it back to front. Do you see what I mean?
There is real confusion in this area from lots of people. I see a lot of non conformances due to misunderstanding in both clients and auditors. I can see why it is because logically you're thinking "raw meat contains lots of pathogens, therefore it's high risk" but the raw meat in itself isn't a risk at all because it's going to get cooked. It's only after it's cooked where nothing is going to be done to it to make it safer for the consumer to eat that it becomes high risk.
Ok, let me explain it another way.
Imagine the following. There is a food handler with Salmonella contamination on their hands.
At step 1-3 - it's not great but doesn't really matter because the food's going to get cooked later.
At step 4 it depends whether that person is handling the raw side or cooked side.
At steo 5 it could be disasterous as they would be recontaminating a cooked dish which has already gone through a heat process.
If you want to think about it in another way still, if you assign step 5 as low risk, that would mean there is only a single handwash, no captive coats, no captive footwear, utensils could come in and out of the area, no problems. The standard of build wouldn't have to be as high nor as easily cleanable. Does that make sense? Nope.
