Systematic review of the relative proportion of foodborne disease caused by faults in food preparation or handling within the home

<p>"To address this knowledge gap, the FSA has commissioned CIEH (in collaboration with the University of Surrey) to undertake a systematic review to establish the proportion of foodborne disease cases attributable to faults in food preparation and handling practices within the home. This study will assess whether there is sufficient high quality data and will attempt to identify the key foods, pathogens and food practices and handling faults which lead to illness and whether it is possible to quantify their impact. In addition to the work to be performed around published, peer reviewed material and ‘grey literature’, the research will benefit from the input of an Expert Panel who will further frame the scope of the study (the research question(s), search terms, inclusion and exclusion criteria) from the outset. Thereafter, a workshop(s) involving people with expertise in a range of subjects pertinent to domestic hygiene will be conducted to discuss the data thus obtained and to explore some of the hygiene issues in more detail. The systematic review will begin with a comprehensive search of both peer reviewed literature and ‘grey literature’ which will be put to the Expert Panel to consider and critique, along with the provisional research questions established during the preliminary stage of the project. It is anticipated that from this that a second ‘search’ will be conducted, along with a refinement of the research questions. Once the systematic review and workshop(s) have been completed it should be possible to determine the strength of the resulting theoretical framework and decide where further research might be needed to reduce uncertainty in the evidence base with respect of the role played by faults in food preparation and handling practices (the 4C’s) in the home but also from contaminated food coming into home."</p>