Get ready for Australian food safety week, Nov 10-17

The Australian Food Safety Information Council announced this week their theme for food safety week – food poisoning.
The council is calling on all Australians to share their stories of food poisoning. By sharing our stories we help to increase awareness and educate each other.

Whether it be your story or the story of a family member or friend, the FSIC wants to hear from you. They are inviting you to tell your food poisoning story.

Although helping all Australians is the goal, the FSIC hopes to better protect members of our communities who are impacted the most by food poisoning:

• pregnant women
• the elderly
• children
• people with weak immune systems

We’ve seen too many cases of food poisoning in 2018, for example:

• 6 Australians died from listeria found in rock melons.
• A woman died from hepatitis A after eating imported frozen pomegranates.
• A school on the Gold Coast in Queensland was forced to close due to a norovirus outbreak.
• 74 dogs were struck down with megaesophagus, an incurable disease.

Luckily, the recall of imported frozen vegetables from Europe prevented any illness or death in Australia. Unfortunately, the recall didn’t hit the UK and Europe in time. 47 cases of listeria and 9 deaths were linked to the frozen vegetables.

Not making food safety a priority means more lives lost. All of us at Food Safety First encourage you to participate in Australia’s Food Safety Week.