How to Keep Your Potluck Safe from Food Poisoning

As the weather warms up, thoughts of potlucks and picnics with family and friends come to mind. However, without proper food safety measures, what should be a fun, relaxing meal can turn dangerous due to harmful bacteria that cause food poisoning. To keep your next event safe, make sure you follow essential food safety practices when preparing, handling, transporting, and serving food.

The USDA emphasizes that maintaining a clean environment is key to preventing illness. With this in mind, we've highlighted some of the most common causes of foodborne diseases—such as undercooked meat, improper food storage, and ignoring expiration dates—and provided safety tips for hosting a worry-free picnic.

Ensure Meat Is Properly Cooked

Raw meat often carries harmful bacteria that can lead to foodborne illness, which is why it's essential to use a thermometer to verify that your meat is cooked through. If you're unsure of the recommended cooking temperatures, our team has compiled a guide to Safe Minimum Internal Food Temperatures for various types of meat. Here are a few key temperatures to remember for common meats at your barbecue:

• Beef: 143 degrees F (43 degrees C)
• Pork: 145 degrees (63 degrees C)
• Chicken: 165 degrees (74 degrees C)

Keep Your Foods Apart

Cross-contamination is a risk that can occur in many ways—such as using the same cutting board for both raw meat and fresh produce, improperly transporting raw meat, or failing to switch out utensils. To avoid this, it's crucial to keep raw foods separated from other ingredients. This includes using different surfaces for raw meat preparation and transferring cooked meat onto a clean plate to prevent contamination.

Avoid Letting Your Food Stay Out for Too Long

To prevent foodborne illnesses, it's essential to handle food properly from the moment you purchase and prepare it. As a general rule, keep cold foods chilled and hot foods hot during your picnic to stop bacteria from growing. The Food and Drug Administration advises keeping food out of the “Danger Zone”, which is between 40°F and 140°F for more than two hours (or one hour if temperatures are over 90°F). This is when bacteria multiply quickly and can cause food poisoning.

This means cold items like chicken salad and fruit should stay in coolers until it’s time to serve them. Once they’re out, avoid leaving them out for more than two hours. For hot foods, be sure to wrap them in insulated containers to maintain heat as much as possible before serving.

FoodKeeper is a great resource that helps consumers learn the best ways to store and use food, beverages, and produce to maintain their freshness and quality.

Learn About Product Dating

We’ve all experienced that moment when you stand in front of the fridge or pantry, eyeing an expired carton of milk or a can of peaches, wondering if it's still safe to use. It’s not always easy to know whether something is safe to consume, but it’s one of the most crucial decisions we make when preparing food. Manufacturers use product dating to help consumers and retailers make informed choices about the quality and safety of food—here’s what that date really means, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

• "Best if Used By/Before" Date: This marker lets consumers know when the product will be at its best flavor or quality, which is not necessarily an indication of safety.
• "Sell-By" Date: A product’s sell-by date is merely a way for retailers to keep track of inventory, which isn’t always important to the consumer. 
• "Use-By" Date: Use-by stickers are intended to let consumers know when the last date is for consuming the product while it is at its peak quality. It isn’t inherently a safety date, unless it is for infant formula. 
• "Freeze-By" Date: This sticker tells consumers when a product should be frozen to preserve its quality, and again, it is not a safety date.

Although product dating doesn’t always indicate when food is unsafe, we recommend checking out the USDA’s Food Product Dating guide for more details on when to safely consume products and how to stay updated on food recalls from retailers.

Ensuring the safety of yourself and your loved ones during picnic and potluck season is essential. If you have any food safety questions, you can reach out to the USDA's hotline at 1-888-674-6854 between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. EST. Speak with a food safety expert who can provide guidance on food storage, quality, and safe handling.