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2020 Food Safety Tips for Summer

A few tips to help keep you and your family safe

June 1, 2020 | 2 min reading time

This article is 4 years old. It was published on June 1, 2020.

Summer is fast approaching. When packing up for a summer picnic, don't forget food safety. About 1 in 6 people in the U.S. will become sick from something they ate this year. Here are a few safety tips that can help you and your family from being part of that statistic.

  • Wash your hands. You need to be sure to wash your hands with warm soap and water before cooking and eating. After handling meat or other raw products make sure to wash your hands before handling any other products.
  • Keep raw food away from cooked food. Keep raw meat separate from vegetables and other prepared foods during transport. Don't forget that bacteria can be transferred on utensils and preparation surfaces such as cutting boards. If you are going to be cooking raw products at the picnic site, bring one set of utensils for raw products and another set for cooked products. Ice that is intended to be used with drinks should be kept in a sealed storage container, not in the cooker with raw meat.
  • Keep your cooler cold. As a rule of thumb, at least one quarter of the space in your cooler should be dedicated to ice. It is also a good idea to freeze any foods that can be frozen before packing them in the cooler. The cooler should always have a thermometer with it. For a cooler to be safe the food inside needs to stay below 40 degrees F. Keeping coolers closed helps them to better maintain stable and cooler temperatures.
  • Get it hot. In additional to checking the temperature of the cooler, temperatures of the food need to be checked. Beef burgers should be cooked to an internal temperature of 160 degrees F and chicken should be cooked to 165 degrees F. Make sure you use a meat thermometer to measure temperature! Grills and fires may differ. Time and the color of the meat are NOT safe or reliable ways to tell if your food is done.
  • Stay out of the Danger Zone! The Danger Zone of food temperatures is between 40 degrees F and 140 degrees F. Food that is between that range has the opportunity to let dangerous bacteria grow and cause harm to those who consume it. Keep foods colder than 40 degrees F or warmer than 140 degrees F. Serve cooked foods when they are still warm, and get left-overs put away on ice.

The same food preparation and handling techniques that are utilized in your home apply when preparing the consuming food away from home.

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