Food Standards Agency
Saturday 4 July 2009
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Listen to this siteDetails of the Agency-funded domestic sector hygiene research programme.
To inform policy aimed at improving food hygiene and understanding of hygiene issues in relation to the domestic sector.
An Agency target is to reduce the incidence of foodborne disease by 20% over a five year period. In order to achieve this, the Agency has adopted a multifaceted approach with the aim of reducing contamination of food, promoting food safety management and developing measures to promote kitchen hygiene. The domestic sector is a key element of this strategy.
Initiatives in the Domestic Sector strand of the Foodborne Disease Strategy focus on:
The Agency aims to:
As part of the Microbiological Safety Division Domestic Sector Hygiene work the Agency needs to identify:
1. Critical control points during the storage, preparation and cooking of food;
2. The level of foodborne disease arising from unhygienic domestic practices and the changes needed to reduce it;
3. The principal target audience(s);
4. The most effective method(s) of communicating food hygiene messages to these audiences;
5. Ways of evaluating whether FSA initiatives have resulted in greater awareness and behavioural changes.
Outputs from this programme will assist the Agency's foodborne disease strategy in meeting its target to reduce foodborne disease by 20% over a five year period and will contribute to policy in this area for the longer term.
Storage, preparation and consumption of a significant proportion of the food eaten by consumers occurs in the home. In the 2002 Consumer Attitudes Survey, 15% of people over 16 years of age who had experienced gastrointestinal illness believed that this was caused by food prepared in the home. If this is a true reflection of the source of food poisoning then it equates to a very substantial number of cases of illness with significant social and economic costs.
Work is needed to identify the extent and causes of food poisoning in the home and to understand how unhygienic domestic practices contribute to the incidence of foodborne illness. The Agency needs to understand how and why breakdowns in hygiene occur in the home, to target initiatives aimed at informing consumers and encouraging hygienic practices. It also needs to understand how consumers are receiving food safety messages and also consider whether there are any gaps in the messages currently being disseminated by the Agency and other organisations. The key is to effect a change in people's behaviour and, in order to achieve this, the Agency needs to know which methods of communication are most effective for different ages and social groups. Research in this programme aims to satisfy these requirements.
Relevant work is already being funded by the Agency, and both MAFF and Department of Health have funded work on domestic hygiene in the past. The Institute of Food Hygiene is also active in producing this type of information/research. The new programme will complement previous work by evaluating the success of past work, looking at any gaps that remain to be filled and considering new ways to get messages across. A workshop was held in May 2002 that drew together current and previous research and assisted in focusing the work and identifying key data gaps in this sector. A number of suggestions were made by delegates, including gaps in knowledge about behaviour of consumers in the kitchen, the effects of myths and 'old wives' tales, the relative risks associated with common kitchen ppractices and the role of hand washing and cleaning.
The need for the programme was identified during development of action plans to take forward the Agency's strategy to address the foodborne disease target in relation to the domestic sector. It has become clear that further work in this area is needed. We also need to assess what information is already being promulgated to avoid unnecessary duplication and allow any gaps to be identified and appropriate work commissioned to fill these.
The FSA funding of this programme is aimed directly at the Agency's target of reducing foodborne disease. The work also has strong consumer relevance, with benefits going beyond the life of the target.
At the conclusion of the programme benefits to the Agency, consumers and other groups will be:
Name
: Marion Castle
Tel
: 020 7276 8963
Email
:
marion.castle@foodstandards.gsi.gov.uk
Details of Agency-funded research projects under the Domestic Sector Hygiene research programme (B20).
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