Evaluating the impact of a pilot safe food-handling media campaign among consumers in Western Australia: Implications for public health messaging

Abstract Over 4.1 million Australians are affected by food poisoning each year. Recent reports indicate that food poisoning is increasing, particularly in Queensland and Western Australia. Foodborne illness is preventable through simple household behaviours such as cleaning hands and surfaces when preparing food, separating raw and ready-to-eat foods, cooking food thoroughly, and keeping food at the correct temperature. Several interventions have been developed to raise awareness of these safe food-handling practices; however, the efficacy of large scale interventions has not been evaluated. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the impact of a pilot safe food-handling media campaign that aimed to increase consumer safe food-handling knowledge and behaviour. Five-hundred and forty-six participants completed measures of safe food-handling knowledge and behaviour prior to and following a pilot safe food-handling media campaign that ran for four months in The City of Busselton, Western Australia. A generalised linear mixed model analysis revealed that the pilot media campaign had an effect on consumer engagement in half of the target safe food-handling behaviours. The pilot safe food-handling media campaign also had a statistically significant effect (albeit not clinically significant) on consumer safe food-handling knowledge, in the oppostite direction to that hypothesised. Findings are discussed in relation to the implications for the design and implementation of future public health messages related to safe food-handling.