Well you may be surprised, but I think that the regulation of industry is a good thing, not a bad thing.

However, my thread is more to the point of, 'do we over react to food safety'.

Now, before you answer this, how many of us willingly purchase food from a market stall, or school fund raiser stall, knowing full well that thier food handling proceedures are inferior to those of registered businesses.

More importantly, why do we target the registerd businesses harder than these stalls?

Remember, I am fully suportive of cracking down on dodgy oporators.

Having been a victim of food poisoning on three occasions during my life Rechtub I have to say in all fairness that the weather turning/changing were two causative facts resulting in both salmon and ham almost killing me 20 years ago; the other being steak sandwiches around the same time that were off prior to cooking and serving.

However, in recent times I have known victims of food poisoning discovering afterwards that trays upon which the food was served and plates have had bacteria on them, which contaminated the food served.
One of the cruise ship's a couple of years ago blamed filthy serving trays as the problem that contaminated hundreds of people.

A girlfriend of mine last year consumed salmon for the first time and it resulted in food poisoning and her being hospitalised.

I have not touched salmon or purchased pre-cooked steak since, nor frozen pizzas or dinners - psychological after suffering and clearly remembering the week of pain!

Next time you are at your local shopping centre that has renovated it's toilets recently, you will notice that you can now enter go to the toilet and wash and dry your hands without having to touch any surfaces. Appreciate the cost of this to the centre management as well as the increased up keep on electronic taps and dryers.

A great point, though the problem is Nairbe, that most people who have not washed their hands [along with those handling money, fruit and veg] turn the door handle that leads in and out of the toilets, which makes it all fairly pointless in terms of thinking 'my hands are now clean' off I zoom to a coffee shop for a coffee or something to eat.

I wash my hands if on the one-off occasion I need to visit a public loo, grab some hand roll paper [if there is any] and turn the main toilet door handle if there are no push out doors.

The latest Australian study broadcasted recently regarding the handling of money, demonstrates that most people do not catch diseases and germs from handling money daily. Common sense would have dictated the contrary!Probably because we dispose of our change too quickly!

Of the people I know who have suffered from food poisoning, most have traced the cause back to contaminated trays, plates or packing materials and food not kept at the right temperature when weather changes from winter to spring to summertime, in particular ham seafood and salmon.

we are unique,
I seriously question whether you actually understand the issue of food poisoning in the community. The high lighting of matters involved around poisoning due to comercial operations are minimal compared to the occurrences of poisoning in the home. We are always quick to identify food vendors when they are guilty of food poisoning but rarely understand when we do it to ourselves.
It is the self imposed issue that happens much more often than any other and more often than not we blame that chicken out let because it was last nights left overs we at that gave us the food poisoning. Yes they sold it to us but they didn't advise eating it 12 hours later.
As i have already said in this post, most people have such a limited understanding of micro-biology and how food poisoning occurs that they make poor accusations on the issue and unjustly blame vendors that have done nothing but serve you what you wanted.
OH, if you don't wash you hands after you go to the toilet, well that is your problem and you deserve to get food poisoning.

One of the reasons we suffer from food poisoning (minior cases) is that as a society we are simply not hard enough.

Gone are the days of kids eating dirt, beetles and anything else that may be on the lawn.

Kids today are far to often brought up in a sterile coocoon like environment and as such, their imune systems simply can't cope.

There are many myths about food handling, like re-freezing.

It is safe to re-freeze food provided it has been thawed and stored correctly. Kept below 5DegC at all times.

You see, most people thaw on the side of the sink and this is where the problem starts as bactira requires two elements to grow. Temp above 5Deg C and moisture.

Best advise is to thaw your foods under refrigeration, however, this does take longer so you must be prepared.

BTW, did you know that you can thaw, re-freeze and thaw green prawns as often as you like and they won't spoil.

rehctub,
In theory that is correct. In practice you will notice a decline in the product quality, this is not here nor there but just a side issue of freezing.
You can not as a commercial operation refreeze product. Also micro organisms operate when they have three conditions.

1. A source of nutrient. (the food)
2. water
3. correct temperature.

The majority of micro organisms will grow best between 5 deg and 32 deg. There are many though that operate happily outside of these temperatures. This is why 65 deg is required to stop organisms growing but not all. Freezing is also no sure way of stoping micro organism growing. There are a whole family of organisms that use these conditions. From there you also have to consider aerobic and anaerobic organisms and the effect these can have.
Things are never so simple and i would never advise people to refreeze food as it is just plain dangerous unless done in very controlled conditions.
As for kid's, well yep i agree we do keep them to sterile these days. It came from an era when hygiene diseases were prevalent, (like polio).
I will admit that i have always let my kids roll in the mud and poo, hell they are kids let them play. We do have the advantage of having 25 acres to play on too.