What does food-to-food infection mean?
Food that contains bacteria can infect “healthy” food either through direct contact or by using the same unwashed kitchen equipment or hands.

Which foods cause food-to-food infection?
All raw animal products like meat, fish, seafood, poultry, raw sausages and raw eggs guarantee ideal living conditions for bacteria and can sustain bacterial growth that causes food-to-food infections.

How does bacteria get onto raw animal products?
Bacteria can get onto meat through contact with the hair or feathers of the animal or can be transmitted by flies. Bacteria can also originate in transport boxes, unhygienic equipment in the butchery or dirty hands of the butcher or sales person. Poultry frequently carries bacteria called Salmonella that can cause serious and very infectious diarrhoea. Eggs are infected with the same bacteria through contact with the excrement and feathers of the chickens.

How do food-to food infections happen?
- Hygiene starts in the shop. If you pack raw animal products (e.g. chicken) together with other food (e.g. bread) into the same shopping bag, the juice of the poultry might drip onto your other shopping. The loaf of bread might get infected with Salmonella. The bacteria will grow happily because the bread is stored outside the fridge.

- But the most common cause of food-to-food infection is the use of the same, unwashed kitchen equipment like knives, cutting boards, kitchen sponges or hands for preparing raw animal products and afterwards other food.

- Another typical problem occurs when preparing fish fingers or chicken nuggets. After rolling the fish in raw egg and breadcrumbs, these breadcrumbs might contain bacteria from the egg or the fish. Don’t put the leftover breadcrumbs back into the package! Mix them with the remaining egg and fry them along with the fish fingers. Then they’re safe to eat.

What can you do to avoid food-to-food infection?
First of all we should buy raw animal products fresh, keep them cool at all times, use them quickly, cook them well and keep them away from other food.

When thawing animal products, make sure that no liquid from thawing drips onto other food.

After handling raw animal products, we have to wash our hands and equipment with dishwashing liquid and hot water. This includes cutting boards, knives, tables, bowls and especially hands.

We shouldn’t use a kitchen sponge but rather clean the equipment with washable cloths and towels and remove them from the kitchen to be washed hot afterwards.

The use of different cutting boards for raw animal products and other food is standard in good restaurants and is also recommendable for your kitchen at home.

The most important advice however to avoid hygienic problems and stay healthy is to wash hands regularly. As a matter of routine, we should always wash our hands before we start our work in the kitchen. We have to wash them again during the cooking process if we have touched something potentially dirty like raw animal products but also the sticky dustbin-lid, our itching nose, the floor, potato peels or after shaking hands with someone who entered the kitchen. Door handles, money and the keys of your mobile phone are usually covered in bacteria as well. In fact even for avoiding other infectious diseases like the swine flu, washing hands is rule number one.

Are you washing your hands often enough? Just check the soap in your kitchen. It should get smaller every day.

Anne Krug