Best wishes to everyone for a healthy and happy new year!

Whitehall-Coplay Hunger Initiative’s next bingo will be held Jan. 9 at Commitment to Family & Community, 165 Cherry St., Coplay.

Doors open 1 p.m.

Call Liz at 484-274-6687 for more details.

The next WCHI food pantry distribution will be 11 a.m.-1 p.m. and 5:30-7 p.m. Jan. 13 at St. John the Baptist Church parking lot, 3024 S. Ruch St., Whitehall.

For more information, call 484-225-0358.

This is a great time of year to host a food and/or toiletry drive for WCHI. Food and toiletries should be placed in separate boxes. We are always in need of toiletries such as toilet paper, tissues, soap, deodorant, shampoo, conditioner, feminine napkins and baby and adult diapers.

Food items should include all kinds of soup, pancake syrup, jelly, cereal boxes and instant oatmeal. If you decide to do a drive, let us know at tinyurl.com/WCHIdrive. WCHI would like to promote your drive on Facebook.

Please note, WCHI does not accept any refrigerated, frozen or homemade items from the public for liability reasons. All of our refrigerated and frozen foods are temperature controlled and come directly from Second Harvest Food Bank.

The federal and state governments have specific rules for food safety. WCHI is required to have a ServSafe certification to be a member of Second Harvest. Several volunteers do have this certification, which needs to be renewed every five years.

I will share some basic tips that everyone should know when handling food at home to prevent foodborne illnesses, which can cause sickness and death. Some of this information comes from the seventh edition of ServSafe manager book.

There are four main risk factors that cause food to become unsafe.

Food with time-temperature abuse can be from thawing frozen food improperly - like sitting on a kitchen countertop for hours instead of being placed in a refrigerator - or not cooking food to the required internal temperatures to kill pathogens that make people sick.

It is good to purchase a food thermometer to make sure the following food items meet these internal cooking temperatures in Fahrenheit: seafood, 145 degrees; whole cuts of beef and pork, 145 degrees; ground beef and ground fish, 155 degrees; and whole and ground poultry, 165 degrees.

Also, these uncooked food items should be placed in the same shelf order in your refrigerator or freezer to prevent food contamination if any of the uncooked juice spills onto another food product. Bread should always be on the top, and chicken should always be on the bottom.

Cross-contamination occurs when pathogens transfer from one food surface to another. This can happen when ready-to-eat food touches contaminated food surfaces. Examples include an apple touching an unwashed cutting board that just had raw chicken on it or a contaminated wiping cloth touching the apple.

Poor personal hygiene includes failing to wash hands often and correctly, sneezing and coughing on food and head or arm scratching and then touching food.

Poor cleaning/sanitizing happens when equipment and utensils are not washed, rinsed and sanitized between uses.

I hope you found these risk factors informative.

Have a great week!