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

The incidence of food poisoning in England and Wales has been increasing for many years and it is now a major public health problem. Superimposed on this general rising trend is a well-established tendency for the number of cases of food poisoning to rise during the summer when warm weather favours the multiplication of pathogenic micro-organisms. This paper shows that weekly notifications of food poisoning in England and Wales are strongly associated with environmental temperatures, but that there are some important time lags in this relationship. The number of cases of food poisoning in a given week was only weakly correlated with the temperature of that week and the one preceding it. This suggests that factors operating close to the point of consumption within or outside the home are not the principal cause of the rise in food poisoning associated with warm summer conditions. There was a much stronger association with temperatures 2–5 weeks earlier, pointing to the importance of factors operating earlier in the food production or distribution system. The results of this study suggest that the food poisoning problem requires action by food producers and distributors as well as by consumers. Received: 15 May 2000 / Revised: 17 October 2000 / Accepted: 18 October 2000