Vegetables: best served washed

The FSA in Scotland has today launched a food safety awareness campaign focusing on the safe handling of vegetables.

The campaign follows E.coli outbreaks reported in Britain earlier this year, which were associated with the consumption of various types of vegetables. These outbreaks highlighted the need to alert consumers to food safety practices associated with the storage, preparation and general handling of raw vegetables.

The need for the campaign was reinforced by consumer research carried out by the Agency that highlighted that the perceived risk from food poisoning from vegetable consumption was low and that there was limited awareness that cross-contamination from raw unprocessed vegetables to high risk foods was a food safety risk.

The campaign focuses on the concept of the ’tap’, as a key component in food safety, to draw attention to the need to:

wash, peel or cook vegetables before eating

store and prepare vegetables separately from ready-to-eat foods

use different chopping boards, knives and utensils for raw and ready-to-eat foods, or wash thoroughly in between preparing different foods

wash your hands after handling raw vegetables

The FSA will also be reminding consumers to pay attention to the labelling of raw vegetables and ensure that particular care is taken with vegetables that are not labelled as ’ready-to-eat’, especially those that have not been pre-washed and may be contaminated with soil.