Speech for Food Safety Week launch

19 November 2001

Welcome to the launch of Food Safety Week 2001. The theme of the week this year is 'Chill out this summer' and our aim is to help people get to know their fridge to lessen their chances of getting food poisoning.

It's no accident that we hold Food Safety Week each year in November - the start of the Australian summer when Christmas is just around the corner. We all enjoy our beautiful summers, and the outdoor lifestyle they make possible, but there are dangers and they're not just to do with snakes and mosquitos.

This is the time of year when the weather is hot, we all entertain more than usual and our fridges work overtime to cope with the extra food - not to mention the beer.

When we have our family and friends round for Christmas dinner or for a BBQ the temperature may be in the high thirties or even the forties. The fridge sits in the kitchen groaning under the weight of food. The fridge door is constantly opened and shut while we get out the cold drinks and nibbles and the turkey, ham or meat sits balanced precariously, fighting for space between the drinks and the salads waiting for meal-time.

In this kind of situation, we put a lot of trust in our fridge to keep our food at a temperature which inhibits the growth of food poisoning bacteria. But does it do so? If it doesn't the result could be serious. The fridge may not be set at a low enough temperature to start with. Every time the fridge door opens, the inside temperature warms up a little more and by the time we get to eat our meal, some of the food, like the cooked meat or the rice salad, could have reached a temperature where it's in the danger zone where bacteria have been able to multiply. When we eat the food, we may get food poisoning.

Getting to know your fridge can stop you getting sick but our research tells us that people don't really know their fridge.

Do you know what temperature to set your fridge at? Even if the beer comes out cold, it may not be cold enough for the food. You need to use a fridge thermometer, check it often and if the temperature is higher than 5 degrees Celsius, adjust the fridge setting to lower the temperature.

You can buy a fridge thermometer from kitchen or electronics stores. They don't cost much and can make sure that you know when your fridge is too warm.

Get to know how to store food in the fridge. Do you know that you should store raw meat below the salads or other ready-to- eat food? If you don't, the blood and juices from the meat could drip on to the salads. Those juices will contain food poisoning bacteria which will now be on the salads. If you cook the meat thoroughly before you eat it that will kill the bacteria on the meat, but you'll eat the bacteria along with the salads.

When the fridge can't hold another thing, do you know which are the most important things to stay in the fridge and which can be put elsewhere? We all know to keep the meat refrigerated, but maybe you think the rice salad could be moved into the cupboard overnight especially if there's no meat in it. Wrong Wrong Wrong. Dishes such as rice or pasta salad can be just as dangerous as meat dishes. Dried rice and pasta contain bacteria which produce spores which can survive the cooking process. These bacteria will grow if the salads are then stored at room temperature. Always keep these dishes in the fridge.

And you can't keep the fridge too overcrowded either or the cold air can't circulate properly around the food. So what do you do? Well, at the risk of sounding un-Australian, how about moving the beer and other drinks into an esky with lots of ice or ice packs to keep them cold? At least the beer can't give you food poisoning - the food can.

The aim of Food Safety Week is to get across these kind of simple messages on things you can do to reduce your chances of getting food poisoning. With food poisoning bacteria changing and, in some cases becoming more virulent, people eating a wider variety of food and more high-risk food and new cooking technology such as microwaving requiring new skills, people need to know more about how to handle food safely.

The most important recipe for your kitchen is the six rules to avoid food poisoning - keep hot food steaming hot; keep cold food refrigerated; separate raw and cooked food; cook food properly; wash hands with soap and thoroughly dry them and keep kitchen and utensils clean. This recipe will be a sure fire hit with all the family.