Cooking, Not Freezing, Remains Key to Food Safety

5 JULY 2007

Cooking, Not Freezing, Remains the Key to Food Safety for Kiwi Chicken Lovers

Consumers can give themselves the ultimate protection from Campylobacter by cooking chicken until the juices run clear and practicing cooking good food hygiene, New Zealand Poultry Industry Association executive director Michael Brooks said today.

``The reduction in campylobacter remains the number one food safety priority for the New Zealand poultry industry but consumers need to remember that cooking poultry meat thoroughly makes it completely safe to eat.’’

``There were renewed calls today by food activist, Michael Baker, to freeze all chickens. The poultry industry supports comments today by NZFSA on National Radio that this draconian approach, ``has not been proven to work’’.’’

``Bakers approach is an over simplistic, unscientific, knee jerk response to a complex worldwide problem – it’s like calling for a ban on cars because of fears about the road toll.’’

Despite last years high and unexplained levels of human campylobacter cases the figure for more recent months show a definite reduction.

``The industry is doing all it can to reduce the rates of campylobacter in the poultry meat processing chain through a series of steps and data collected shows that reductions of levels of campylobacter on chicken are occurring.

``Consumers can be reassured that the industry is treating this problem as a priority and is committed to continually supporting education and information programmes that will provide the public with the food handling and cooking procedures that will make their favourite meat completely safe to eat. We refer consumers to our industry website – www.pianz.org.nz/foodsafety for further information.

What the industry is doing

- Trialling new processing interventions in a bid to reduce Campylobacter levels on carcasses.

- Employing an independent consultant to review and recommend changes to current processing plant practices, a number of which are already in place.)

- A major research programme to review Campylobacter levels on farms as well as in processing facilities.

- Extensive reviews of on-farm biosecurity practices.

- A review of food safety information for consumers

ENDS

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