Clay County, MO Public Health Rules: Food Handler Certification (2026)

Sec. 31(B) requires the person in charge at a Clay County food establishment to demonstrate, during inspections and on request, knowledge of foodborne disease prevention, hazard analysis and critical control point principles, and the Food Code's requirements. The section lists three ways to satisfy that duty: having no priority-item violations during the current inspection, being a certified food protection manager who passed a test through an accredited program, or answering the inspector's questions correctly on a long list of topics spanning cross-contamination, cooking and holding temperatures, allergens, sanitizing procedures and employee illness reporting.

Sec. 31(C) singles out the certification route: a person in charge certified by a food protection manager program that is evaluated and listed by a Conference for Food Protection-recognized accrediting agency as meeting the Conference's accreditation standards is deemed to comply with the knowledge-demonstration requirement in Sec. 31(B)(2), skipping the inspection-based or oral-quiz alternatives entirely. Sec. 01(c) frames the whole chapter, the county's Food Code, as covering food establishment plan review, permit issuance, inspection, employee restriction and permit suspension, so the certification pathway sits inside the same permitting scheme that already requires a food establishment permit to operate.