It's Food Safety week for Tonbridge People!

It's food safety week all week.

Check out the details from Tonbridge & Malling Borough Council:

Food Safety Week will take place from 11 to 17 June and the theme for 2012 is 'food safety on a budget'. This annual event, held to promote the importance of good food hygiene in the home, will focus on how people can ensure that they keep their food safe when trying to save money.

The Food Standards Agency's advice on leftovers says:

· If you are going to store leftovers in the fridge, cool them as quickly as possible, ideally within 90 minutes. Cover them, get them in the fridge and then eat them within two days.

· Make sure your fridge is operating at the correct temperature, it should be below 5oC.

· You can also freeze your leftovers, but cool them first to minimise temperature fluctuation in your freezer. They can be safely stored in the freezer almost indefinitely, but the quality will still deteriorate gradually with time, so it's best to eat them within three months.

· Make sure you defrost frozen leftovers properly before using them. If you're going to cook them straightaway use a microwave. If you don't have a microwave, defrost them in the fridge overnight.

· Eat leftovers within 24 hours of defrosting and do not refreeze them again. The only exception to this is if you are defrosting raw food, such as meat or poultry, which can be refrozen once it has been cooked.

· Cook leftovers until steaming hot throughout.

There are around a million cases of food poisoning every year in the UK. In Tonbridge & Malling 250 cases of food poisoning were reported in 2011. The levels soar during summer months across the UK with around 120,000 extra cases of illness from June to August. One of the reasons for this increase is warmer temperatures causing any germs present to grow faster, which underlines the importance of getting leftovers in the fridge quickly.

Find more on Facebook at www.food.gov.uk/foodsafetyweek or follow the FSA on Twitter @foodgov #FSW2012