by Tania Bradley

It was Christmas and my daughter, Ruth, was overseas, short of cash and missing out on her Christmas dinner. She was due to arrive home a month later, so thinking I would give her a treat when she arrived, I cut a generous portion of the Christmas turkey and ham and popped it in the freezer.

She arrived home late January and a few days later, wasn' t too keen on the dinner I was planning. Time for her 'Christmas treat'. I took the cooked turkey and ham out of the freezer first thing that morning, put it on a dish and left it on the bench top to defrost until she was ready to eat it, cold with salad, that night.

That night Ruth really enjoyed her late 'Christmas dinner'. 'That was the best Mum' , she said. But a few hours later, when we had all gone to bed, there were some strange noises coming from her room. I went to investigate.

For the next four or five hours, Ruth had a pretty unpleasant time. I held a basin while she was sick roughly every half hour and was making a dash for the toilet in-between. When I took her to the doctor the next day, she said Ruth had a bad attack of food-poisoning. So much for the Christmas treat.

What went wrong? Well - perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I left the turkey and ham out on the bench-top for around eleven hours - not in the fridge. As the surface temperature of the meat warmed, any food poisoning bacterial present would have had the chance to grow. If I'd reheated the turkey before serving it, that might have helped, but if the bacteria were the type that produce toxins, Ruth would still have got sick. That the temperature that day was around 40 degrees Celsius certainly didn' t help.

Food safety expert with SafeFood Production NSW, Barry Shay, says these kind of food-handling errors are more common than we think.

' Australia has one of the safest food supplies in the world' , Barry says. 'This has been achieved by effective working partnerships between food manufacturers, food handlers, retailers and government regulators. However, every year, over four million Australians get sick from eating contaminated food'.

There' s a lot we can do to reduce the risk of our families getting food poisoning. Barry is the Chairman of the Food Safety Information Council - a group of organisations including government, food industry and professional associations. Each year, the Council organises Food Safety Week to let consumers know about simple things they can do to prevent food poisoning.

The Council promotes some simple messages to ensure that food is safe.

1. Keep hot food steaming hot
2. Keep cold food refrigerated
3. Separate raw and cooked foods
4. Cook food properly
5. Wash hands with soap and dry thoroughly 
6. Keep kitchen and utensils clean

Food Safety Week this year has the theme, ' Chill out this summer' , and is spreading the word for people to adjust their fridges to five degrees Celsius or below - a very simple step that can considerably reduce the risk of food poisoning.

Sounds simple, but recent research shows that most people don' t know what temperature their fridge should be at. And how do you tell if your fridge is at the right setting?

' People often set the temperature of their fridge when they first buy it and leave it at that setting for ever after. That isn' t good enough. You need to adjust the setting in very hot weather or when the fridge contains more food than usual to make the fridge colder. School holidays, Christmas and other festive occasions can also be a problem when the fridge may be packed fuller and opened more often than usual.

' There are some signs that let you know if your fridge is struggling' , Barry says, ' If perishable food is spoiling very quickly - your milk is going off quicker than it should for example, that' s a pretty clear sign that your fridge is not cold enough.

' But you really need a fridge thermometer to be sure. During Food Safety Week, the Council will be handing out simple, stick-on fridge thermometers (subject to availability) at displays and events throughout Australia. It is recommending that people put a thermometer in their fridge and check it regularly. Some parts of the fridge are colder than others. The meat compartment is probably the coldest so it may be best to place the thermometer there. If it shows your fridge is higher than five degrees, adjust the fridge setting to lower the temperature. The compartment for fruit and vegetables (usually at the bottom of the fridge) will usually be the warmest so that the vegetables don't freeze. To avoid chilling injury to lettuce, it's best to keep it in a crisper.

' There are a few other things you can do to ensure that food is safely stored in your fridge,' Barry says. ' Store uncooked meats, fish and poultry near the bottom of the fridge so that juices don' t drip onto other foods. These juices may contain food poisoning bacteria and can contaminate other food if they drip onto it. If you have to store raw meats higher in the fridge, put them in leak-proof, covered containers. Ensure that the cold air can circulate around the food by not trying to cram too much in your fridge.

' Cover any cooked or ready-to-eat food and keep raw and cooked foods separate to reduce the risk of cross-contamination.

' When you take food out of the freezer, make sure you thaw poultry, rolled or seasoned (stuffed) meat joints and boned meat joints right to the centre before cooking. Always follow thawing and cooking instructions on packaged, frozen food and thaw cooked or ready-to eat foods (like leftover Christmas turkey and ham) in the fridge or microwave - not on the bench top.'

That last bit of advice could have saved my daughter Ruth from a pretty unpleasant night. But at least for her the consequences weren' t too serious. Had she been a young child, an elderly person or someone whose immune system was compromised, it could have been a lot worse.

Imagine how guilty I' d have felt then. I' m going to be paying a lot more attention to food safety in my home in future.

Try this simple quiz ' Do you pass the food safety test in your home? '

October 2003