If the Food Safety Authority's new public health campaign doesn't prompt the public to examine forks in restaurants, wash dishcloths and be suspicious of coleslaw in delis, nothing will.

Its new advertising campaign features forensic bags filled with a variety of infection-causing everyday items. The official-looking labels attached list the revolting symptoms caused by bad kitchen practice. The hard-hitting campaign is made up of eight press ads and was devised by Cawley Nea Advertising. It will run until March 2000 and the media spend is £250,000 (€317,430).

"I think there is some surprise that the ads are so pointed," says Mr Graham Nolan of Cawley Nea. "But for this sort of campaign, the tone is all-important." The agency decided to treat the subject in the same way as it would a general consumer product because of the turnoff potential of a preachy public health campaign.

Cawley Nea has had the account for the past 18 months and, aside from occasional public notices about specific food issues, this is the first major piece of advertising conducted by the Food Safety Authority. As a result of several food scares, the authority's research found that there was a high degree of literacy about the issue but a lack of specific knowledge.

Many people, for example, knew and used words such as food poisoning, salmonella and even e coli without quite knowing how these problems were caused.

According to Ms Eilis O'Brien, director of communications at the authority, the advertising is designed not only to encourage better food hygiene in the home but also to make consumers less tolerant of poor hygiene when eating out. Food poisoning, it appears, is now so widespread that under-reporting is becoming a serious problem.

The press campaign is supported by a series of four 30-second radio advertisements featuring the characters Sam and Ella, who will become part of a spin-off from the campaign which will concentrate on information packs and posters for schools.