When talking about food poisoning, the two main culprits are listeria (Listeria monocytogenes) and salmonella. In Australia, one in ten cases of listeriosis is a pregnant woman, and for one in five of those women, the disease tragically results in the death of the fetus. Newborn babies are also particularly susceptible.
Foods that carry a higher risk of listeria or salmonella contamination should, therefore, be avoided while pregnant.
These include:
It’s quite a list, but the general rule is – stick to cooked foods and eat them while they’re hot. Heating anything to 75°C will quickly kill listeria and salmonella.
For more reading, see this excellent fact sheet from NSW Health
Latency, when it comes to temperature logging, refers to the delay between a change in temperature and when that change is detected and recorded by the logger. This delay can be due to the sensor’s design, the materials it’s placed in, or the logging interval. While it might sound like a disadvantage, latency can actually serve a useful purpose in certain environments—particularly where short-term temperature spikes are common but not harmful.
For example, in a busy commercial fridge, the temperature may briefly rise every time the door is opened. A logger with high latency won’t immediately react to these short fluctuations, helping to avoid unnecessary alarms or false data indicating a problem when there isn’t one. In these cases, a slight delay in response acts like a filter, focusing attention on real issues—such as prolonged exposure to unsafe temperatures—while ignoring the everyday ups and downs that don’t affect product quality or safety.
Depending on the type of logger you have, connecting your logger to your PC means either:
First Generation LogTags use a separate Reader (sometimes called a dock) for configuration and for downloading recorded data.
The Second Generation loggers only require a USB port or cable. Apart from saving the cost of the Reader, this makes them much better suited for shipping, because the recipient doesn’t need a LogTag Reader to download a report about the shipment’s journey.
