The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH) has been commissioned by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to undertake a review to establish the proportion of UK foodborne disease associated with food preparation and practices in the home. 

Working with academics from the University of Surrey, researchers from the CIEH will seek to discover how the number of cases of foodborne disease caused by faults in the home compares with those caused by eating food prepared and consumed outside, such as from restaurants and takeaway premises.

Traditionally commercial food operations have been the main focus of attention for environmental health departments around the country.

The domestic kitchen has also been recognized as an environment where people are at risk of contracting foodborne illnesses. However, there has been less attention paid to researching the extent to which poor standards of food preparation and handling contribute to making people ill.

The results are expected to be reported in the summer of 2017 and may have important implications for improving food safety in the home.

As Casey Jacob and I concluded in a 2009 paper, “Rather than focusing on the location of consumption—and blaming consumers and others—analysis of the steps leading to foodborne illness should center on the causes of contamination in a complex farm-to-fork food safety system.”

Robert Tauxe of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has noted there have been 10 new food vehicles indentified in multistate outbreaks of foodborne illness since 2006: bagged spinach, carrot juice, peanut butter, broccoli powder on a snack food, dog food, pot pies, canned chili sauce, hot peppers, white pepper and raw cookie dough.

Few, if any of these have to do with consumers.

C.J. Jacob and D.A. Powell. 2009. Where does foodborne illness happen—in the home, at foodservice, or elsewhere—and does it matter? Foodborne Pathogens and Disease. November 2009, 6(9): 1121-1123

Foodservice professionals, politicians, and the media are often cited making claims as to which locations most often expose consumers to foodborne pathogens. Many times, it is implied that most foodborne illnesses originate from food consumed where dishes are prepared to order, such as restaurants or in private homes. The manner in which the question is posed and answered frequently reveals a speculative bias that either favors homemade or foodservice meals as the most common source of foodborne pathogens. Many answers have little or no scientific grounding, while others use data compiled by passive surveillance systems. Current surveillance systems focus on the place where food is consumed rather than the point where food is contaminated. Rather than focusing on the location of consumption—and blaming consumers and others—analysis of the steps leading to foodborne illness should center on the causes of contamination in a complex farm-to-fork food safety system.