Environmental temperatures and the incidence of food poisoning in England and Wales

The incidence of food poisoning in England and Wales has been increasing fo r many years and it is now a major public health problem. Superimposed on t his general rising trend is a well-established tendency for the number of c ases of food poisoning to rise during the summer when warm weather favours the multiplication of pathogenic micro-organisms. This paper shows that wee kly notifications of food poisoning in England and Wales are strongly assoc iated with environmental temperatures, but that there are some important ti me lags in this relationship. The number of cases of food poisoning in a gi ven week was only weakly correlated with the temperature of that week and t he one preceding it. This suggests that factors operating close to the poin t of consumption within or outside the home are not the principal cause of the rise in food poisoning associated with warm summer conditions. There wa s a much stronger association with temperatures 2-5 weeks earlier, pointing to the importance of factors operating earlier in the food production or d istribution system. The results of this study suggest that the food poisoni ng problem requires action by food producers and distributors as well as by consumers.