Food Safety Week

It’s Food Safety Week this week, which is now co-ordinated by the FSA. It’s a great annual opportunity to focus on the simple things we can all do to prevent food poisoning. The timing of the Week is particularly appropriate, bearing in mind that there is a surge in food poisoning cases in early summer and that just under half of the cases caused by salmonella or campylobacter occur between June and September. So in the warm summer months, we all need to be especially careful to keep food safe.

Considerable progress has been made in reducing food poisoning since July 2001, when the FSA set itself a target to reduce foodborne disease in the UK by 20% by 2006. The provisional number of laboratory-reported cases of the foodborne pathogens monitored by the Agency is now 19.2% lower than the baseline figure for 2000. Over the same period it’s estimated that the total number of cases has been reduced by 1.5 million, which represents a cost saving of £750m.

But there’s still work to be done. As anyone who has had food poisoning knows, it’s extremely unpleasant – and sometimes very dangerous. And perhaps most importantly, it’s frequently preventable. Previous FSA research has shown that when people get ill with food poisoning they often assume that the cause is something they have eaten outside the home. And sometimes they are right, which is why initiatives such as 'Safer food, better business’ and ‘Scores on the Doors’ are so important.

But lots of cases of food poisoning also originate from poor food hygiene in the home. Emails received by the FSA demonstrate that many people don’t appreciate how important it is to keep certain foods cold, such as the husband and wife who wrote in to settle an argument about whether it’s safe to keep a cooked chicken out at room temperature overnight (to which the answer is definitely no).  

The focus of this year’s Food Safety Week is keeping foods cold, with the slogan ‘Bugs like it hot!’ This is an important message to bear in mind whether at home, after food shopping or when taking a picnic on a day out. Part of an experiment commissioned by the New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) found that the temperature of chilled raw meat packs left in a car in sunny weather for just 90 minutes rose to 35 degrees C, which is close to the optimal growth temperature for many bacteria. So it’s definitely a good idea to use a cool bag for your shopping or picnic.