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Practice Food Safety

While the food supply in the United States is one of the safest in the world, the CDC estimates that 76 million people get sick, more than 300,000 are hospitalized, and 5,000 Americans die each year from foodborne illness. Preventing foodborne illness and death remains a major public health challenge. To reduce your risk of foodborne diseases, take the following precautions: • COOK meat, poultry and eggs thoroughly. o Use a thermometer to measure the internal temperature of meat to be sure that it is cooked enough to kill bacteria. o Ground beef should be cooked to 160o F. o Eggs should be cooked until the yolk is firm. • SEPARATE: Don't cross-contaminate one food with another. o Wash hands, utensils, and cutting boards after they have been in contact with raw meat or poultry and before they touch another food. o Put cooked meat on a clean plate, not the one that held raw meat. • CHILL: Refrigerate leftovers promptly. o Bacteria can grow quickly at room temperature, so refrigerate leftover foods if they are not going to be eaten within 4 hours. o Large volumes of food will cool more quickly if they are divided into several shallow containers. • CLEAN: Wash produce. o Rinse fresh fruits and vegetables in running tap water to remove visible dirt and grime. o Remove and discard the outermost leaves of a head of lettuce or cabbage. o Because bacteria can grow well on the cut surface of fruit or vegetable, be careful not to contaminate these foods while slicing them up on the cutting board, and avoid leaving cut produce at room temperature for many hours. o Wash your hands with soap and water before preparing food. o Avoid preparing food for others if you yourself have a diarrheal illness. o Don’t spread illness by changing a baby’s diaper while cooking. • REPORT: Report suspected foodborne illnesses to your local health department o The local public health department is an important part of the food safety system. o Often calls from concerned citizens are how outbreaks are first detected. o If a public health official contacts you to find our more about an illness you had, your cooperation is important. o In public health investigations, it can be as important to talk to healthy people as to ill people. Your cooperation may be needed even if you are not ill.

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