Data on Temperature of Food Products Made Available

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Ecolab, a provider of cleaning, sanitizing, food safety and infection prevention products and services, yesterday announced the publication of research data that measures food temperatures in retail and consumer refrigerators and freezers. Study participants purchased dairy, ice cream products, prepackaged lunch meat, sliced deli meat, fresh ground beef, fresh fish, prepackaged deli salads and frozen food at their neighborhood grocery stores and measured product temperatures in the display case, arriving at home, and after 24 hours of at-home storage.

The EcoSure 2007 Cold Temperature Evaluation was undertaken by EcoSure, Ecolab’s food safety and quality assurance business, as an update to past research done in 1989 and 1999. The updated research report is available for free download at www.FoodRisk.org, an online resource specializing in food-safety risk analysis.

“Understanding the potential for temperature abuse of food is an important element in designing effective food safety controls, and the 2007 data contains essential risk management information that can help the entire food industry,” said Dr. Katie Swanson, vice president of food safety at Ecolab, in a statement. “We wanted to make these findings broadly accessible to better assist the food industry and risk assessors in evaluating the temperature-related risk profile of food products.”

Read More of Today's Headlines