This Week

10 March 2001

Sick to the stomach

FOOD poisoning rockets in summer, but it’s not down to dodgy cooking on the
barbecue. Poor hygiene on farms and abattoirs is to blame for the rise in
illness, say British researchers.

People in England and Wales are up to five times as likely to get food
poisoning in summer. To pinpoint the cause, environmental risk analysts Ian
Langton and Graham Bentham from the University of East Anglia in Norwich tried
to correlate average temperatures with food poisoning cases each week. They
found the number of cases was linked to high temperature when the food was being
produced, two to five weeks before it was eaten. “The consumer has always been
blamed, but it looks like a bigger problem is the food production process,” says

According to Langton, high temperatures stress intensively reared animals
even further, making them more susceptible to infection. Bacteria also grow
faster in warm weather,

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