Safer Food Business - Blog ( SFBB ): FOOD SAFETY ESSENTIAL

When considering food safety, it is generally accepted throughout the UK, that there is a target temperature that the core of most raw, high risk food should reach to guarantee it is safe to eat and this is normally around the 75 to 80 degrees centigrade mark.

There are many micro-organisms present in food that can cause illness and they all behave slightly differently when heat is applied. Food safety is not only dependent on target core temperature but time too.

To ensure food safety across the board, food safety scientists set the target temperature at a level that they believed would guarantee food safety in the worst case scenario and the following temperature / time combinations are widely accepted as safe targets.

80 C for 6 seconds

75 C for 30 seconds

70 C for 2 minutes

65 C for 10 minutes

60 C for 45 minutes

These targets were set with conventional cooking in mind however, over recent years, there has been a rise in the popularity of low temperature / long time cooking techniques and consequently the scientists have revised these targets.

Of particular concern is E-coli. At temperatures above 70 degrees centigrade,

E-coli dies at more or less the same rate as most other food poisoning bacteria so the above temperature / time combinations are considered satisfactory at 70 C or above, but at temperatures below 70 C their death rate is significantly slower.

The recommended temperature / time combination for food that is likely to be contaminated with E-coli are now set at

65 C for 14 minutes

60 C for 93 minutes

See the FSA - Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food report here:-

http://www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/multimedia/pdfs/acmsfburgers0807.pdf

More information on food safety is available via this link:-

http://www.amazon.co.uk/kindle/dp/B00K34H650/ref=rdr_kindle_ext_eos_detail