FSA Scotland awards two more food hygiene grants

Wednesday 7 April 2004

Two Food Standards Agency Scotland (FSAS) grants have been awarded to a pair of central belt local authorities.

The two grants, both of £10,000, awarded to City of Edinburgh and West Dunbartonshire Councils, will help develop projects aimed at raising awareness of the essential messages underpinning the Agency's national Food Hygiene Campaign.

Local authorities and food liaison groups throughout Scotland were asked to submit a brief project plan to the FSAS by January and last month £70,000-worth of grants were announced.

Jim Thomson, Assistant Director, FSAS said: ‘Although we had already announced the local authorities set to benefit from these grants, we felt the proposals from both City of Edinburgh Council and West Dunbartonshire also warranted attention.

‘Both of these additional projects will ensure key messages surrounding food hygiene will reach an even wider audience which will go a long way to help prevent food borne illness and improve hygiene considerably.’

The two additional successful proposals are:

• City of Edinburgh Council – to reduce the incidences of food poisoning among young adults in the city, specifically undergraduates and those living in deprived areas, by raising awareness of food safety issues through information and training.
• West Dunbartonshire Council – to raise awareness among target groups such as parents, carers and pre-school children, of the importance of the 4 Cs (cooking, cooling, cross-contamination and chilling) in preventing food borne and related illnesses and to encourage good hygiene and food safety practices.

Initially, fifteen local authorities, around half the number of councils in Scotland, submitted a total of 17 proposals.

Each successful proposal outlined below was awarded £10,000. The initial seven successful local authorities were:

• Dundee City Council – To reduce risk of food poisoning by promoting training as opposed to enforcement and making food hygiene training more accessible to minority groups in the city.
• West Lothian Council – To produce a short film on food hygiene with voice-overs in English and ethnic minority languages as a training resource for high-risk food businesses.
• North Lanarkshire Council – To provide food hygiene training for primary and secondary school teachers.
• Stirling, Clackmannanshire and Falkirk Councils – To provide elementary food hygiene and HACCP training in Cantonese and Urdu to ethnic minority catering businesses.
• Renfrewshire Council – To commission a short computer animated advert promoting important food safety messages to be shown at local cinemas for a period of one month during the school holidays.
• Aberdeen City Council – To provide a series of practical hands-on training sessions on basic food hygiene within high-risk establishments and ethnic minority outlets where language is a barrier.
• Angus Council – To provide school pupils and Angus carers with education and training in hand hygiene and infection control.

The successful applicants were identified by the judging panel, which comprised representatives from FSAS, Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland (REHIS) and Grampian NHS Board.

The Food Hygiene Campaign aims to improve hygiene standards across the UK, to support the Agency's target to bring about a 20% reduction in food poisoning cases by 2006.