Food poisoning cases are down but there are still problems

“The Foodborne illness in Australia: Annual incidence circa 2010” Report, has just been released by the Federal Department of Health.
Although the information it contains is now four years old, it shows that since the previous decade’s report, there has been a significant decrease in the number of foodborne illnesses per year. The number of cases of food borne illness has gone down from 5.4million cases in the previous report to just over 4 million in this report.
We can all feel proud of this, but there is still much more work to be done to avoid and prevent this serious health issue for the whole country, because when you look at the statistics, it works out to be that each of us has around a 1 in 6 chance of getting food poisoning each year.
The results in the report also highlight that many of these cases are for the most part preventable by having good food safety controls in food businesses, and even more so being practised by the community.
Food safety is not the sole responsibility of food businesses, as it does not matter how much they do to protect the food, if a shopper does not maintain good temperatures and hygiene at home and when transporting their food.
The report identified a couple of frightening trends, there are increasing cases of both Salmonella and Campylobacter by 24 per cent and 13 per cent respectively. These are the two leading causes of hospitalisation from foodborne illness and for them to be increasing is a worrying result.
The report also showed that of the 4.1million cases of food borne illness per year, only 0.8 million have the cause identified on average. This means that for the vast majority of foodborne illness in this country, there will be no identified cause regardless of the research done.
With Australian Food Safety Week 2014 rapidly approaching in the second week of November, it is a good time to remind the public that they have a huge role to play in keeping food safe and not allowing themselves or their families to become one of those food poisoning cases.
The theme of this year’s Australian Food Safety Week is The Temperature Danger Zone and reminding the public about the importance of keeping hot foods hot and cold foods cold. Salmonella is readily killed by high temperatures if the public can take on the measure from this year’s Food safety Week and apply it to their homes, we may have a good chance of easing this increasing trend as well as reducing the total number of cases of food borne illness each year.
You can find the full report at – http://bit.ly/10qcZQg and information about Australian Food safety Week 2014 at www.foodsafety.asn.au
Written by Rachelle Williams, The Green Food Safety Coach.