City of York Council's food and safety team is reminding residents to keep their food cool this summer as temperatures start to soar.

This week - National Food Safety Week - the Food Standards Agency (FSA) is warning that 'bugs like it hot'. Every year there are around 800,000 cases of food poisoning in the UK with just under half of cases due to bugs such as salmonella and campylobacter occurring during the summer months.

To combat this trend, food safety experts recommend keeping food cool when eating outside. Just ten invisible bugs in your food can multiply to 1,000 in six hours; 100,000 in less than ten hours; and to more than a million in 12 hours. And, when it's very hot, bugs can multiply even faster!

Anna Carson of the council's Food and Saftey team said: "Bugs can be prevented from gatecrashing people's summer parties. These bugs multiply at such a rate, especially in cars while travelling, that they threaten to take over the day!  Picnics should be chilled, particularly if stored in the back seat of a car or in the boot as they are breeding 'hot spots' for bugs.

"If you keep food cool or chilled, you won't get such an unpleasant gathering and there will be less chance of a problem later."

Top tips from City of York Council to day-trippers on keeping food cool on hot, sunny days are:-

·Avoid delays in getting shopping home -  if possible, use a cool bag

·If you are taking food for a picnic or day out, put it in a cool bag with some ice bricks or frozen cartons of fruit juice, to help keep it cool.

·Keep the food in the cool bag until you are ready to eat it

·Always keep stored food covered and out of the sun

·Make sure that raw foods such as meat are kept separately from ready-to-eat foods