Festival barbecues

Food poisoning can ruin your festival experience. Some simple steps can help you keep food safe and healthy.

The two main risks when barbecueing food are: 

• undercooked meat
• spreading germs from raw meat to food that’s ready to eat

Raw or undercooked meat can contain germs that cause food poisoning, such as salmonella, E. coli and campylobacter. However, it’s easy to kill these germs by cooking the meat until it’s piping hot throughout and the juices that come out of it are clear.

Cooking meat

These tips apply to all kinds of meat, including chicken, lamb, pork, beef, and the meat in burgers and sausages.

When you’re cooking meat on a barbecue:

• get the coals glowing red with a powdery grey surface before you start cooking. This means that they're hot enough
• thaw frozen meat properly before you cook it
• turn the meat regularly and move it around the barbecue so that it cooks evenly

Meat is safe to eat only when:

• it's piping hot in the centre
• there is no pink meat visible
• the juices that come from it are clear

"Don’t assume that because meat is charred on the outside it will be cooked properly on the inside," says a Food Standards Agency spokesperson. "Cut the meat in the thickest part and ensure that none of it is pink on the inside."

Raw meat

Germs from raw meat can move easily on to your hands and then on to anything else you touch, including food that is cooked and ready to eat. This is called cross-contamination.

Cross-contamination can also happen if raw meat touches anything (including plates, cutlery, tongs and chopping boards) that then comes into contact with other food.

Some easy ways to help prevent cross-contamination are: 

• Wash your hands with soap after you touch raw meat
• Use separate utensils (plates, tongs, containers) for cooked and raw meat
• Never put cooked food on a plate or surface that has had raw meat on it
• Keep raw meat in a sealed container away from foods that are ready to eat, such as salads and buns
• Don't put raw meat next to cooked or partly-cooked meat on the barbecue
• Don't put sauce or marinade on cooked food if it has already been used on raw meat