This Australian Food Safety Week 9 to 16 November, the Food Safety Information Council is advising consumers that air fryers could be a food safety risk if they don’t follow cooking instructions.

Lydia Buchtmann, the Council’s CEO, said that air fryers are becoming very popular with our recent research shows 2 in 3 Australians surveyed have an air fryer in their household, with 54% of those using it weekly and 38% several times a week.

‘Air fryers are convenient and easy to use, but there have been individual foodborne disease cases around the country linked to air fryers, especially when cooking crumbed products that may look cooked on the outside but aren’t fully cooked on the inside.

‘Before using your air fryer we recommend you ‘Look before you cook’ and follow these simple tips:

• Follow any instructions that come with the air fryer which often include how to cook different products.
• Check out specific air fryer cooking instructions on food packaging which you might find next to cooking instructions for the cooktop, oven, or microwave.
• Use a meat thermometer to check higher risk foods, such as a Schnitzel or Parmigiana, are cooked to a safe temperature of 75°C in the centre.

‘We would also encourage food manufacturers to ensure cooking instructions for air fryers are listed on packaged food that can be cooked that way. Our research shows that 44% of air fryer owners  find these instructions most of the time on crumbed, packaged food and  the same proportion (44%) only find air fryer cooking  instructions occasionally  on crumbed food. It would be highly beneficial if manufacturers listed air fryer cooking instructions on more packaged products.

‘Finally, we would also remind consumers to ‘Look before the cook’ and check cooking and storage instructions and date marking on all food packaging. The same research shows that only 3 in 10 consumers say they always read cooking and storage instructions, with only 6 in 10 always reading use by dates and 5 in 10 always reading best before dates,’ Ms Buchtmann concluded.

The Food Safety Information Council would like to thank our member Neogen, the Gold Sponsor for Australian Food Safety Week, and our Summer campaign. The Council acknowledges our members SA Health for supporting our consumer research and NT Health for funding our indigenous campaign.

Methodology: Research conducted nationally online over the period  August 22-27, 2024, among a sample of 1229 people aged 18 years and over. To reflect the overall population distribution, results were post-weighted to Australian Bureau of Statistics data (Census 2021) on age, sex, area and highest level of schooling completed.