We all know that you have to cook pork until it's grey, that you can't leave anything with mayonnaise out for too long, and that a quick whiff tells you if food's gone bad. Except that each of those 'facts' is wrong. Food safety experts to pull together a list of consumers' most common food safety myths.

From obesity to cancer to Taliban terrorism, the food and beverage industry seems to get blamed for all of this world's ills. OK, maybe not the Taliban, but for just about everything else, the modern diet and processed foods are fingered as the culprits. On the likes of obesity, food safety, 'questionable' ingredients, this series of articles outlines how the industry can do a better job of tactfully defending itself; the key is transparency.

Studies have proven that pathogens such as Campylobacter and Salmonella contaminate a high percentage of raw chicken meat. Now, recent research from a food safety team at Pennsylvania's Drexel University offers proof-of-concept for what may one day be a common approach to preventing food-borne illness from raw poultry and meat products - the use of high-energy, low temperature plasma to eliminate unwanted bacteria while leaving the food basically unchanged.

Chlorine is a commonly used tool of the fresh-cut produce industry to prevent cross-contamination in the wash flume. But a high organic load, as is common in fresh-cut produce, reduces the efficacy of chlorine by using up free chlorine. A new chlorine stabiliser called SmartWash from New Leaf Food Safety Solutions, Salinas, Calif, could improve food safety during the wash and transport through the cutting room.

With the spectre of past deadly poisonings, the US food industry is stepping up its quest for clean salad greens, testing various industrial washes and other methods like ultrasound.

Manuka honey could help clear chronic wound infections and even prevent them from developing in the first place, according to a new study published in Microbiology. The findings provide further evidence for the clinical use of manuka honey to treat bacterial infections in the face of growing antibiotic resistance.

A deadly toxin produced by certain kinds of E. coli, including those that caused a deadly outbreak in Europe last year, can be combated using the element manganese, according to research that may lead to an inexpensive treatment for infections.

A small group of people will meet in Washington later this year for what they hope will be a lunch to change the world. The meal should consist of fried chicken and nothing else, but while it may look like chicken, have the texture of chicken and even taste like chicken, it will never have lived or breathed.