Food Safety: At Home

When preparing food for yourself and others, there are five major factors you can control:

• your own hygiene and state of health when preparing food
• the cleanliness of your food preparation environment
• the temperature to which food is cooked
• the prevention of the cross contamination of raw and cooked foods
• the safe storage of raw and cooked foods

Potentially hazardous foods such as raw and cooked meats, dairy products, seafood, processed fruits and vegetables, cooked rice and pasta. Other foods of concern may contain allergens such as eggs, beans and nuts require special attention.

Germs from raw chicken can travel quickly. Stop them with the simple to follow tips available in this guide - Germs love to travel (274 KB PDF)

Food poisoning is illness resulting from consumption of contaminated food or water. There are many ways to avoid food poisoning in your home and when eating away from home - Preventing food poisoning (85 KB PDF)

The 2 Hour / 4 Hour guide below tells you how long freshly prepared potentially hazardous foods can be safely held at temperatures in the danger zone; that is between 5c and 60c - The 2 hour/4 hour rule (46 KB PDF)