Food Safety Week June 2002
The theme of this year's National Food Safety Week is "Food Safety Across the Board". The Week will have a broad food safety focus encompassing key food safety messages dealing with safe storage, temperature control (both cooking and chilling), avoiding cross-contamination, kitchen cleanliness and hand washing.
Did you know...
- Food poisoning bacteria are very hard to detect; they do not usually affect the taste or smell of the food.
- One germ can multiply into four million in just eight hours.
- Germs can stay alive on hands for up to three hours.
- The number of germs on your fingertips doubles after you use the toilet.
- Up to half of all men and a quarter of women fail to wash their hands after they've been to the toilet.
- Right handed people tend to wash their left hand more thoroughly than their right hand, and vice versa.
- Damp hands spread 1,000 times more germs than dry hands.
- One housefly can carry two million bacteria.
National Food Safety Week 2002 runs from 10 to 16 June. Working through local environmental health and health promotion departments, schools, hospitals, manufacturers and retailers, it aims to show how to keep our food safe from the time it is bought until it is eaten.
The key messages are:
- Keep food safe
- Avoid cross-contamination
- Keep raw and cooked foods apart
- Wash hands thoroughly before and after touching food
- Control temperatures
- Keep kitchens clean; and
- Avoid waiting times between cooking, preparation and eating.
The foodlink campaign is organised by the Food and Drink Federation in association with the Food Standards Agency, the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland, the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, the Departments of Health, Food and Education, the Local Authorities Co-ordinating Body on Food and Trading Standards, the National Farmers Union, the British Retail Consortium and the British Hospitality Association.
Foodlink, c/o Food and Drink Federation, 6 Catherine Street, London WC2B 5JJ. Tel: 020 7836 2460 Fax: 020 7379 0481 Email: foodlink@fdf.org.uk Web: www.foodlink.org.uk
