The Food Standards Agency (FSA) Northern Ireland has created a bingo-based game that is designed to promote good food hygiene.

Entitled Beat the Bingo Bug, the game is meant to help raise awareness of the food bug listeria among the over-60s.

It has been created by the FSA in conjunction with safefood and local councils and will be available throughout Food Safety Week, which runs until June 21st.

The game has five main themes; cooking, cleaning, stopping the cross-contamination of germs, chilling food and choosing food.

It emphasises the importance of food safety by conveying 100 messages such as ‘don’t miss the date’ instead of traditional bingo numbers. These messages are then matched by players on their bingo cards.

The hope is that this will show people why they need to pay attention to the use-by dates and storage instructions of the food they buy.

More than 2,000 copies have been sent to a host of groups, the FSA revealed.