It’s food safety week in the U.K.

So expect some communication nosestretchers.

The Food Standards Agency said more than half of those surveyed in Scotland believed they could tell if food was safe to eat by its smell or appearance.

But the agency says potentially dangerous food bugs such as E. coli and salmonella do not always make food smell "off" and do not affect the way it looks.

Yet the Food Standards Agency advice on cooking meat is until the juices run clear or it’s piping hot.

It’s a terrible risk communication strategy to tell people they are food safety dumb when the government advice – cook until piping hot or the juices run clear – is also dumb.
 

CBS Sunday Morning had a bit on 85-year-old Dick Van Dyke, still singing and dancing and acting his way into our hearts.

And all I could think of was piping hot.

The Brits, not ones to disappoint, issued their annual holiday turkey advice today, with nary a mention of thermometers.

“The Food Standards Agency is reminding people to follow some simple safety steps this Christmas when preparing their turkeys, to help keep the festive period free from the misery of food poisoning.”

If it was only so simple.

FSA gets it right when they say,

* Don’t wash your turkey before cooking. Washing is more likely to splash food bugs on to worktops, dishes and other foods. Proper cooking will kill bugs.

And they get it wrong when they say,

* Check the turkey is cooked properly by cutting into the thickest part of the meat. None of the meat should still be pink and any juices that run out should be clear. Finally, the meat should be steaming hot all the way through.

That’s what the gravy is for. Use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer, and stick it in. 165F is sufficient.

Try harder.

Because when communicating about science with the public, the U.K. Food Standards Agency really sucks.

So when some FSA-type (right, not exactly as shown) writes,

“We pride ourselves on being a science-based organisation and on putting the consumer first, so the big question we deal with on a daily basis is: how do you maintain scientific accuracy while making the science easy for people to understand?”

I may have just thrown up a little.

This science-based organization has apparently decided – against all available scientific evidence – that the best advice for cooking whole poultry is until it is “piping hot.”

This is scientifically inaccurate, and as a lowly member of the public, I don’t know what it means.

The FSA-type further writes:

“Effective communication is about thinking how messages are received rather than how they are sent out.”

Awesome. Can you provide the research which shows actual consumer behavior interpreting the message of piping hot?

And he further writes:

“To be heard and heeded, too, our advice needs to be succinct and easy to understand but also accurate. So, over to you, how do we get the balance right?”

FSA advice to cook poultry until piping hot is inaccurate – color is a lousy indicator, a tip-sensitive thermometer is required to ensure the bird has reach an internal temperature of at least 165F or 74C, and piping hot may be meaningful in a Mary Poppin's movie but not in a microbiologically safe kitchen. There is no balance to strive for when the information is wrong.

Get the science right, then work on the flair.
 

On March 20, 1996, British Health Secretary Stephen Dorrell rose in the House to inform colleagues that scientists had discovered a new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in 10 victims, and that they could not rule out a link with consumption of beef from cattle with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease.

Overnight, the British beef market collapsed and politicians quickly learned how to enunciate bovine spongiform encephalopathy and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Within days, the European Union banned exports of British beef; consumption of beef fell throughout Europe; and the tell-tale triumvirate of uncertain science, risk and politics was played out—and continues—in media headlines. Beef consumption across the European Union (EU) dropped 11 per cent in 1996, and the BSE crisis cost the EU US$2.8 billion in subsidies alone to the beef industry in the first year.

Yet the March 20, 1996 announcement, rather than the beginning of the on-going BSE crisis, as it is now commonly called, was instead the culmination of 10 years of bureaucratic mismanagement, political bravado, and a gross underestimation of the public’s capacity to deal with risk.

In response to BSE and several other food poisoning outbreaks, the Food Standards Agency was created in 2000. I may have some of the details wrong because I’m going for speed at the moment and relying on wiki, but one of the key philosophical underpinnings of the new agency was that farming, food processing and food safety maybe shouldn’t be concentrated in one department. You hear the same thing when Washington-types talk about the need for a single food safety agency.

The Guardian reports tonight U.K. health secretary, Andrew Lansley, is to announce the abolition of the Food Standards Agency – which has fought a running battle with industry over the introduction of color-coded "traffic light" warnings for groceries, TV dinners and snacks – sparking accusations the minister has "caved in to big business."

As part of sweeping changes Lansley will reassign the FSA's regulatory aspects – including safety and hygiene in the food chain – to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Meanwhile, its responsibilities for nutrition and diet advice and its public health remit will be incorporated into the Department of Health.

There’s lots of allegations about industry-pressure, and food dyes, and obesity and genetically-engineered foods, but not too much about food safety, except for a spokesman for cereal manufacturer Kellogg's, who said,

"The FSA has done a very good job in terms of food safety and science but there was a feeling that perhaps its role was becoming far too broad.”

Whoa there. Dr Judith Hilton, Head of Microbiological Safety at the FSA, said in July 2007,

'”The current UK advice that burgers should be cooked at 70°C for 2 minutes or equivalent is upheld by this ACMSF report. Advice to consumers remains the same – to follow manufacturers' instructions and make sure that burgers are piping hot throughout, cooked until the juices run clear and there’s no pink meat inside.”

And I’ve made fun of the advice, because clear juices and meat color are lousy indicators of microbiological safety.

The move will lead to lots of proclamations about all things trendy for foodies, but won’t do much for food safety.