Practicing Food Safety to Prevent Food-Borne Illnesses in Las Vegas Homes

Maintaining safe
food-handling practices is not only for business establishments who want to
acquire a certificate of approval in food service sanitation. This practice
should be exercised by individuals, family and guests in Las Vegas homes, especially during this busy season of food
preparation, to ensure safety and hygiene in the kitchen and for the holiday
dinner afterwards.

Consumers are
aware of the possible severity of food-borne bacteria on a person’s health but
the problem is that many lack the information on how to prevent it; this is according
to a report from US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A survey
concluded that 15-30% of respondents did not practice specific food handling
and those who are under 35 years old know less about food safety terms and
concepts compared to those over 35 years old.

For instance,
consumers did not refrigerate cooked food immediately, with 29% declaring they
would let roasted chicken cool completely before refrigerating. There are only
32% who testified that they would make use of small, shallow containers when
storing and refrigerating leftovers.

Homeowners of Las Vegas homes should realize
that failure to refrigerate poultry for more than 4 hours may jeopardize
safety. Consumers who are not concerned or uncertain of food safety are 18% of
the respondents while 14% of them are not worried at all.

The statistics
of 54% who specified that they would wash a cutting board with soap and water
when using it in between chopping vegetables and cutting raw meat indicates
that the need for sanitation is not widely recognized.

There are 5 of
the most common food-handling error that food experts have recognized. These
are getting food and other food products from unsafe sources, heating or
cooking food in less than the specified time, then serving contaminated raw
food, cooling food improperly, and allowing 12 hours or more between
preparation and eating.

Listed below are
some of the many factors that caused the consumers’ lack of familiarity
concerning safe food handling:

• There
  are few schools that offer or require food preparation classes.
• Young
  people are less exposed to food-handling practices in Las Vegas homes as there is an increased involvement in the
  paid labor force.
• More
  consumers are used to partially prepared foods which have different and less
  familiar handling requirements.