Avoid Food Poisoning During Summer Picnics

parents with daughters having picnic

Brittany Behm
Brittany Behm, Public Affairs Specialist, Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases

When I think about summer picnics, I think about family. I think about my cousins, aunts, uncles, kids running around, a pavilion, and an enormous buffet table loaded with delicious food. The quantity of side dishes and desserts is exceeded only by the number of dad jokes we’re forced to endure. Since I’ve been working with foodborne disease, I’ve made a point to share tips with family members who are preparing food so we can avoid getting sick from food poisoning.
Let’s enjoy National Picnic Month by taking a few simple steps:

Keep foods cool

Rates of food poisoning increase in summer months because bacteria grow faster in warmer weather. Eating food left in the Danger Zone (40°F to 140°F) for too long can make people sick.

  • Keep raw meat, poultry, and seafood chilled until ready to grill, in the fridge or in an insulated cooler, below 40°F.
  • Put leftovers in the freezer or fridge within two hours of cooking –or ONE hour if above 90°F outside.
  • Throw away any remaining perishable food that isn’t refrigerated.

Cook meat thoroughly

It’s important to cook food to a safe internal temperature to destroy harmful bacteria. Never partially grill meat and finish cooking it later.

  • Use a food thermometer to make sure meat is cooked hot enough to kill germs. You can’t tell just by looking at it! (145°F for beef, pork, fish; 160°F for hamburgers and ground meat; 165°F for chicken or turkey).
  • If you’re smoking meat, keep the temperature inside the smoker at 225°F to 300°F.
  • Keep cooked meats hot and out of the Danger Zone before serving.

Clean hands and produce

  • Wash fresh vegetables and lettuce. If you’re not sure whether water will be available to wash on site, rinse produce before packing for the picnic.
  • Wash your hands before handling any food AND after touching raw meat, poultry, or seafood. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol.
  • Clean work surfaces, utensils, and the grill before and after cooking.
  • Examine the grill surface carefully for bristles that might have dropped off the grill brush. They could get into your cooked food and hurt you if swallowed.

Separate raw from cooked

You never want bacteria from raw meat or seafood to contaminate other foods, surfaces, or utensils.

  • Throw away or thoroughly cook marinades and sauces that have touched raw meat or seafood.
  • Put cooked meat on a clean plate.
  • Keep raw meats, poultry, and seafood away from cooked and ready-to-eat food and drinks.
  • Don’t use the same utensils on raw foods and cooked and ready-to-eat foods.

This summer, I’m going to work hard to try to avoid being one of the 48 million Americans who get food poisoning every year. Let’s raise a glass of iced tea to well-cooked burgers, rinsed veggies, and chilled fruit salad!

Learn more

Making a Norovirus Vaccine a Reality

Transmission electron micrograph (TEM) image of some of the ultrastructural morphology displayed by norovirus virions, or virus particles.
Transmission electron micrograph (TEM) image of some of the ultrastructural morphology displayed by norovirus virions, or virus particles.

Have you ever experienced severe diarrhea or vomiting? If you have, it’s likely you had norovirus. If you haven’t, chances are you will sometime in your life. Norovirus is a very contagious virus that anyone can get from contaminated food or surfaces, or from an infected person. It is the most common cause of diarrhea and vomiting (also known as gastroenteritis) and is often referred to as food poisoning or stomach flu. In the United States, a person is likely to get norovirus about 5 times during their life.

Norovirus has always caused a considerable portion of gastroenteritis among all age groups. However, improved diagnostic testing and gains in the prevention of other gastroenteritis viruses, like rotavirus, are beginning to unmask the full impact of norovirus

For most people, norovirus causes diarrhea and vomiting which lasts a few days but, the symptoms can be serious for some people, especially young children and older adults. Each year in the United States, norovirus causes 19 to 21 million illnesses and contributes to 56,000 to 71,000 hospitalizations and 570 to 800 deaths.

Protect Yourself and Others from Norovirus.
While there is hope for a norovirus vaccine in the future, there are steps you can take now to prevent norovirus.

Additionally, norovirus is increasingly being recognized as a major cause of diarrheal disease around the globe, accounting for nearly 20% of all diarrheal cases. In developing countries, it is associated with approximately 50,000 to 100,000 child deaths every year. Because it is so infectious, hand washing and improvements in sanitation and hygiene can only go so far in preventing people from getting infected and sick with norovirus.

This is why efforts to develop a vaccine are so important and why in February 2015 the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, CDC Foundation, and CDC brought together norovirus experts from around the world to discuss how to make the norovirus vaccine a reality. Participants were from 17 countries on 6 continents and included representatives from academia, industry, government, and private charitable foundations.

Important questions remain regarding how humans develop immunity to norovirus, how long immunity lasts, and whether immunity to one norovirus strain protects against infection from other strains. There are also relevant questions as to how a norovirus vaccine would be used to prevent the most disease and protect those at highest risk for severe illness. These are all critical questions for a vaccine, and this meeting was a step toward finding answers to these questions and making a norovirus vaccine a reality.

For more information on norovirus visit CDC’s webpage: http://www.cdc.gov/norovirus/.