Keeping the deadliest dish off the menu

The problem with food poisoning, however, is that it is an integral part of the ''it couldn't happen to me'' syndrome. Food hygiene is always somebody else's problem: it occurs (or doesn't) in the back shop of the local butcher's, or on the deli counter of the supermarket, or in the kitchen of the restaurant, rather than around the cooking habits chez Mr and Mrs Average Consumer. When we get it right, it is because of our innate common sense. When things go wrong, it was because somebody else in the food chain didn't wash their hands, use a separate chopping board, or put the defrosting chicken in the bottom of the fridge and the cooked gammon on the top shelf.

That is why a National Food Safety Week, which is how next week is designated, is perceived by the professionals to be A Good Thing. It will turn the spotlight away from the food producers, who have been getting it in the neck since the day Edwina Currie wiped soft boiled eggs and brown bread soldiers off the national menu, and onto the consumers, who are fed up with all the claims and counter-claims about the state of their food. It will stress that everyone who handles food between the field and the plate has a role to play in making it safe to eat, and that includes what the consumer does with it between the shop and the dinner table.

On May 1 this year, Scottish Office figures appeared to show that in the past 10 years, the number of people suffering from food poisoning in Scotland had more than doubled. Annual notifications had risen from 4230 in 1985 to 10,234 in 1996. Lothian Health Board was at the top of the table with 1984 cases, a rise of 935 in 10 years, and Lanarkshire health board figures showed a rise from 408 cases in 1986 to 1376 in 1996. That included 504 confirmed and suspected cases of E-coli from the November 1996 outbreak which killed 21 people. In the Commons, MPs have asked for research into why Scotland seems to be more prone to food poisoning outbreaks than other parts of the UK, and the Commons agriculture select committee has demanded greater accuracy relating to the number of poisoning cases, research into links between intensive farming and food safety, and tighter curbs on the use of growth-promoting

antibiotics on farms in the face of growing resistance to drugs among life-threatening diseases.

Professor Michael Jackson, professor of environmental health at the University of Strathclyde and a member of the Commission for Environmental Health established to investigate the future of environmental health in the UK, has said that although in the mind of the public, food poisoning tends to be associated with eating out or buying contaminated food, the home can be just as hazardous. As there is no compulsion to register cases of food poisoning, it can be argued either that the current figures are just the tip of the iceberg and the rise is even greater than they show, or that over the past 10 years there has simply been better reporting of cases to the local authorities. After all, with the spectre of an outbreak such as the Lanarkshire E-coli 0157 outbreak hovering over the surgery, what doctor is going to risk leaving a food poisoning case lying quietly in the patient's file? What

member of the public, alerted to the fact that a dose of the runs is no longer a joshing matter about bad pints and volcanic curry but something potentially fatal, is going to hunt out the bottle of Colis Brown Mixture from the bathroom cabinet instead of lifting the phone for an appointment with the GP?

Jacquie Reilly, a research fellow in sociology at the medical research department of Glasgow University, has a remit to discover how best to get messages over to the public when there is a food problem. She suggests that showing the public respect is a good place to start. There was public anger, for instance, when Government reassurances that there could be no link between BSE and CJD were turned on their head by new information. Reilly says: ''People laughed off the idea that you could get a fatal disease from a piece of meat.'' Consumers became very aware that they had believed the Government line that beef was safe, and Reilly says the lesson to be learned from the BSE situation has been ''Don't give unqualified certainty when there is none''. She believes the public can handle food messages, and that panic comes instead from a food industry threatened by the kind of crisis which has

beset the egg and beef producers in the past decade.

Professor Vicky Houston, head of the School of Food and Consumer Studies at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, like Professor Jackson, does not want us to be lulled into a complacency which puts all the blame on the food industry or the Government. The school offers food companies the facility to produce food in as hygienic a way as possible, and companies today have an awareness of hygiene issues. The consumer, however, says psychologist Dr Houston, does not have a concern until something like the E-coli outbreak happens. Buying habits change then, but those changes are often short-lived, as with the BSE situation. Beef buying in Scotland is almost back at pre-1996 levels.

The way we buy and store food is vitally important, and although we are moving away from the monthly shop and from having big home freezers, which each present safe storage problems, our kitchens are now so small, we haven't room for an adequately-sized fridge for a family's weekly food needs. Familiarity breeds contempt, and if we do have freezers, we no longer meticulously label the contents. We rely on the microwave to defrost poultry.

Are we too cavalier in our kitchen habits? Professor Houston says there are risk takers who go a couple of days past sell-by dates, and those who stick to the rules. Most people think it is someone else's problem, and if they do contract a tummy bug, they ''externally attribute it'' so they are absolved from blame - the bad pint syndrome. People do know the messages, she says, but raising awareness makes them put rules into practice. ''Scare tactics don't work,'' she says, citing the original Aids campaigns. ''The most effective way of getting messages over is to give them to groups of people and let them discuss them.''

That will in fact be happening across the country next week. Typically, Elizabeth Corbett, head of food safety enforcement in Glasgow, has organised seminars, and is taking discussions into nursery schools and senior citizens clubs, putting an information page on the Internet and opening a hotline for enquiries.

One of Professor Houston's colleagues at Robert Gordon University, Dr Ian Millar, also part of the team which has received a #500,000 grant to research food hygiene and consumer perceptions, wants to develop techniques which will help reduce the number of pathogens in food in the first place. There must be a responsibility taken by both the industry and the public, however, if we are to beat the bugs. The Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point principle (HACCP), developed to keep astronauts free from food poisoning, involves workforces in identifying the points in the production process where greatest risk of contamination arises. The public must develop its own HACCP system to cut down on risks at home.

Cleanliness, short storage times, and appropriate temperatures are key factors in food safety. As Professor William Reilly of the Scottish Centre for Infection and Environmental Health in Glasgow reminds us, our grannies cooked mince to oblivion and killed all known germs, while today we eat burgers which can be under-cooked and contain organisms which can cause illness.

Only a few E-coli bugs will make someone seriously ill, while it takes thousands of salmonella organisms to cause a problem. Professor Reilly explains that many enteric diseases are spread person to person because of lack of personal hygiene. Have we reached the stage when Dettox should be a condiment? Not quite - the story is not all black. This year, however temporary it may prove to be, figures for E-coli are the lowest for five years and salmonella statistics are down. The meat industry is beginning to look at the whole process practice rather than putting the emphasis on individual carcasses. Professor Reilly, who enjoys his food, says: ''Don't think we are living in a society where food is so seriously contaminated we can't afford to eat it.''