Kerre Woodham: It's getting hard to stomach...

There are many things I'd change about my body, but the one thing I'm grateful for is my cast-iron constitution. To my knowledge, I've never had food poisoning - and I've had it all.

When I was the host of Ready, Steady, Cook, we'd finish the show tucking into the food prepared by the chefs in just 20 minutes, and quite often we'd chow down on chicken that was suspiciously pink. No problem.

In every country I've been to, I've taken advantage of the cheap and cheerful offerings from roadside stalls and, despite scarfing down minced snake, fried locusts and what may or may not have been dog, I've never been afflicted.

But not everyone is as robust - every year thousands of New Zealanders succumb to the misery of food poisoning. And now the Food Safety Authority is fixing its beady, bureauratic eye on food stalls.

Sausage sizzles, cake stalls, food festivals - they've all come under suspicion, no doubt to the outrage and umbrage of the doughty New Zealand women that produce the offerings for these traditional fundraisers.

Surely the authority would be better off targeting those dodgy restaurants that featured on the telly recently, those with the E-ratings that are veritable petri dishes of bacteria.

And perhaps they could raise public awareness about safe food-handling practices.

I have yet to hear of anyone stricken by a date loaf from the bowling club fundraiser, or a bread-wrapped sausage from a Cancer Society stall.

At the moment, the authority is touring the country calling for submissions and I hope the Federation of Farming Women and the nation's bowlers tell the authority what they think of the idea of toughening up the standards for the A&P shows, the fundraising stalls and the bring-and-buys. There are more obvious targets and the authority should concentrate on those.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY