In an article on my blog last week, I discussed the top five factors that the CDC considers the most important causes of foodborne illnesses. These risk factors apply to consumers as well as to food businesses.
Over the next few weeks, I will discuss these risk factors to explain why each risk factor is important and what food processors and consumers can do to reduce their risk of getting a foodborne illness.
Checklists can help us keep food safe if we know what we are monitoring. Image from Pixabay.
The first CDC risk factors was “Holding at an Improper storage temperature”. In summary this is what I call the “keep hot food hot and cold food cold” rule. For consumers this means cool food down after cooking if not eating straight away and don’t leave high risk food out on the counter for more than 2 h, even if it was cold at the beginning. Read more here.